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MAGIC TO 
SCIENCE 


Essays 
on the Scientific 
Twilight 


CHARLES SINGER 


Boni and Liveright 
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 


Tue historiated border on the title page is from a work that 
appeared just four hundred years ago, the Cosmotheoria of Jean 
Fernel, printed at Paris in 1528 by Simon de Colines. Of the 
figures in the interlacings, those on the left symbolize the sciences 
themselves, those on the right representative exponents of the 
sciences. In the uppermost row Astronomia holds an armillary 
sphere and to her corresponds Ptolemy with his quadrant and book. 
In the next tier Musica fingers the zither and is faced by Orpheus 
twanging his harp. Below them Geometria, with her compass and 
right angle, is opposite to Euclid, who displays his book of diagrams. 
In the lower margin two figures, Arithmetica and Alkhowarizmti, i.e. 
‘he of Khorasan,’ both exhibit boards inscribed with the so-called 
‘ Arabic’ numerals. ‘The application of these numerals was 
known as Algorism, a word formed. by corruption and compression 
of the name of Alkhowarizmi. The letters in the right lower panel 
are an abbreviation of a form of the word Algorism. 

We have to thank Messrs. E. P. Goldschmidt & Co., Ltd., of 
London, for the loan of the book from which this border was taken. 


Printed in Great Britain 


Si 
Aoi 
ion Ta 
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eal” 
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Ca 
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ae 
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e. 
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- 
* 


GRAHAMO WALLAS 
AUCTORUM DOCTORUM 
>‘ JUCUNDISSIMO 


STUDIOSORUM UNIVERSITATIS 


AMICO FIDELISSIMO 
SAPIENTIAE 
CULTORI DILIGENTISSIMO 
VERITATIS 


- PERQUISITORI ET INDAGATORI AVIDISSIMO— 


DONO DO DEDICO 


DR. CHARLES SINGER HAS ALSO PUBLISHED 


1. The Cures of the Diseased in Forraine Attempts of the English 
Nation, London, 1598. Reproduced in Facsimile with Introduction and 
Notes. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1915. 


2. Studies in the History and Method of Science, First Series. Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1917 (out of Print). 


3. Studies in the History and Method of Science, Second Series. Oxford : 
Clarendon Press, 1921. 


4. Greek Biology and Greek Medicine. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1920. 


5. Early English Magic and Medicine. Oxford University Press (for the 
British Academy), 1920 (out of Print). 


6. Greek Science and Modern Science : a Comparison and a Contrast. 
London University Press, 1921. 


4. The Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood. London: G. Bell & 
Sons, Ltd., 1922. 


8. With Professor Henry E. Sigerist. Essays on the History of Medicine 
presented to Karl Sudhoff on the occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. 
Oxford University Press, 1923. 


9. With the Hon.Th. Zammit,C.M.G. Neolithic Representations of the 
Human Form from the Islands of Malta and Gozo. The Museum, Valletta, 
Malta, 1924. : 


10. With Professor Karl Sudhoff. ‘The Fasciculus Medicinae of Johannes 
de Ketham, Alemanus. Facsimile of first Edition of 1491 with Intro- 
duction and Notes. Royal Folio. Oxford University Press, 1924. 


11. With Professor Karl Sudhoff. ‘The Earliest Literature on, Syphilis. 
Lier & Co. : Florence, 1925. 


12. The Fasciculo di Medicina, Venice, 1493, with . . . a Translation of 
the ‘ Anathomia ’ of Mondino da Luzzi, etc. 2 volumes, folio. Lier & 
Co. : Florence, 1925. 


13. The Evolution of Anatomy. London : Kegan Paul, 1926. 


14. With Dr. Edwyn Bevan, O.B.E. The Legacy of Israel. Oxford : 
Clarendon Press, 1927. 


15. Religion and Science considered in their Historical Relationships. 
London : Ernest Benn, Lid., 1928. 


16. A Short History of Medicine. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1928. 


PREFACE 


THE main part of each of these Essays has been printed 
at various times during the last ten years. Some of them 
are now accessible only with difficulty. Since they are 
scattered through various publications and since they 
represent, in fact, the continuous development of a single 
line of thought, it has seemed advisable to collect them 
together. All the Essays except the first are considerably 
modified from the form in which they originally appeared. 

The conception that the universe is a rational system, 
working by discoverable laws, seems to have first appeared 
as a definite belief among the Ionian Greeks in the sixth 
century B.c. If we had records sufficient to trace the 
inception and early development of this idea, there would 
surely be few topics more fascinating or more worthy of 
study. Alas! the material is wanting and the history of 
Ionian philosophy is little but guess-work. Nevertheless, the 
process by which a rational conception of the world comes 
gradually to possess the mind is one which touches us all 
nearly, whatever may be our philosophy. Anything that 
may throw light upon it is worthy of consideration. The 
only adequate historical record that we have of the rational- 
ization of thought, affecting an entire civilization, is to be 
found in the documents which display the passage of the 
medieval into the modern way of thinking. The history 
of that process, when it can be written in proper perspective, 
should provide an absorbing theme. 

For the development of this theme we are far better 
placed than for the study of the Ionian rationalization. 
The material is very abundant and the medieval scholar 
has seldom to regret the scarcity of his documents. Never- 
theless, but little progress has been made towards the 


proper digestion of the available material from the 
; Vil 


Vili PREFACE 


point of view that we are discussing. The medievalist 
is seldom a man of science, not infrequently he has his 
own axe to grind, and it is only in recent times that ade- 
quately trained medieval scholars have given their atten- 
tion to the development of rational conceptions of the 
material world. 

It is manifest, looking back on the Middle Ages, that 
they represent a process of slow decline from the intellectual 
efficiency of classical antiquity, and that this decline is 
followed by a recovery. The brilliance of the recovery in 
some departments and in some periods, e.g. of Art and 
Philosophy in the thirteenth century, must not blind us 
to its extreme slowness in the observational sciences. It is 
the twofold process of decline and recovery in the observa- 
tional sciences that the author has set himself to trace. 
These Essays deal, however, only with the earliest and first 
steps in the recovery. They do not claim to trace the 
later steps and the author has here little to say of de- 
velopments after the twelfth century. More detailed 
treatment of the later medieval period must be reserved 
for another volume, though some of these Essays block 
out the general line of treatment of the later period. 
Here some sort of attempt is made to trace the collapse 
of ancient science into the swamp of magic and the first 
attempts at recovery from that hideous slough. 

The first Essay appeared in its present form as the 
article on Science in the volume on The Legacy of Rome 
edited for the Clarendon Press by Mr. Cyril Bailey in 
1923. ‘This Essay traces the decay of the rational spirit 
in the Roman world. It is hardly our purpose here to 
discuss all the causes of that decay. One important cause 
is certainly the failure of the active process of scientific 
research. The mind, ceasing to be ventilated by new 
knowledge, turned inward on itself and we can perceive 
early but very definite symptoms of more complete decay. 

The second Essay on The Dark Ages and the Dawn of 

_ Science was originally contributed to a volume of essays — 


PREFACE 1X 


entitled Science and Civilisation edited by Mr. F. S. Marvin 
and published by the Oxford University Press in 1923. 
The article as there printed has been considerably modified. 
It is an attempt to trace, in barest outline, the entire course 
of medieval science, and as such is the key to the volume. 
The author recognizes, however, that it is impossible in 
the short space of such an article to give more than the 
most general sketch of so large a subject, and that on many 
points the present state of our knowledge is really inadequate 
for definitive statement. 

Much of the material of the third Essay, The Lorica of 
Gildas the Briton, was contributed to the Transactions of 
the Royal Society of Medicine (Historical Section) in 1920. 
This Essay has been considerably altered from its original 
form. In it we touch bottom in our series. The text 
which is here treated represents the most extreme magical 
degradation of the classical and ecclesiastical traditions. 
In the other Essays no attempt is made to set forth a full 
text, the attention of the reader being directed rather to 
general movements and tendencies. Here, however, it 
seemed to the author that he was dealing with a type 
of material of which few of his readers could have had 
any experience. Such magical and superstitious practices 
as crop up from time to time in our every-day life we are 
accustomed to treat with a smile. They seem to us harm- 
less foibles, and few realize the degradation involved when 
the mind becomes saturated with such material and deluded 
with such hopes. The miserable theurgy of the Lorica of 
Gildas the Briton exhibits to us Science, Theology, and 
Literature in the last stages of decomposition. Though 
Celtic in origin, the most ardent Celticist will hardly 
claim that it adds radiance to the Celtic glamour. 

The Essay on Early English Magic was originally read 
before the British Academy and was published in the 
Proceedings of that body in 1920. It has been rearranged 
and somewhat abbreviated from its original form. The 
material that is discussed is, in many places, little above 


x PREFACE 


the Lorica, which was in fact freely used by the Anglo- 
Saxons as a protective charm. The main interest of 
Anglo-Saxon magic appears to the author to be the evidence 
that it provides for the mingling of cultures even at a very 
early date, and in a simple state of society. It happens 
that the diverse sources of Anglo-Saxon magic are relatively 
easily traced. These sources are set forth, but special 
emphasis is laid on the Teutonic element. This is stressed — 
not because the Teutonic element is very large—for it is 
not—but because it forms a useful contrast to the classical 
and ecclesiastical elements that are more extensively 
discussed elsewhere in this book. 

There is a reflexion to which a perusal of these two 
Essays, one on a Celtic and the other on an Anglo-Saxon 
theme, may perhaps incline the reader. A type of medieval 
enthusiast exists who would have us believe that the world 
would be well lost if we could only return to the intel- 
lectual habits of our forefathers. Books and articles are 
written on early Irish learning, on the Carlovingian revival, 
on the British and early English Churches and on like 
topics, in a tone which would lead undiscerning readers 
to believe that the Learning, the Civilization, the Culture, 
or the Humanity of those days are comparable to our own. 
Progress to these writers is but illusion, and that which has 
been shall again be. ‘To those disposed to think on these 
despairing lines we may recommend a perusal of the mate- 
rial with which we have here to deal. It may be objected 
that we have chosen the lowest and rejected the highest 
manifestations of the medieval spirit, and that these are 
but the products of local ignorance and perversion. But 
the manuscripts from which we have taken this material 
are, in fact, for the most part of exquisite monastic 
workmanship. ‘They were valuable and valued posses- 
sions, written by highly skilled scribes among a people ~ 
with whom even literacy was rare. If we were really — 
to exhibit the lowest manifestations of the medieval spirit 
we should have to go beyond the written page with 


ee ee ee ee ee ee es ee ae oS 
* 


ae re ee ge 


PREFACE x1 


which these Essays deal, and should be exhibiting customs 
comparable to those of West African savages. But all ages 
and all civilizations have their savage as well as their saintly 
side. ‘To gain a true view of what Europe was thinking and 
feeling during the Middle Ages, the reader would be well 
advised to refuse to fix his gaze either on St. Francis, St. 
Thomas, and Dante on the one hand or on the bestial 
practices of the.medieval peasantry or on the cruelty and 
wrong wrought by the Inquisition on the other hand. 
In placing the Lorica of Gildas, the history of the herbal 
and the Anglo-Saxon magical material by the side of St. 
Hildegard and the School of Salerno, it seems to the author 
that he has presented a favourable and not an unfavourable 
picture of the medieval mind. 

In thinking of the Middle Ages it is always necessary to 
remember that the knowledge of the day was not only 
perverted and corrupted in quality but that it was also 
extremely small in extent. Indeed, we suspect that this 
latter element has given one of the main interests to 
medieval literary studies. Our civilization is nowadays 
so complex and all parts of our world are so inter- 
dependent that it would be extremely difficult to trace 
the sources of any modern writer and to provide any 
exact demonstration of the degree to which he is original. 


With the medieval writer the case is different. Even the 


most learned of medieval writers—even Albertus Magnus 
himself—knew so piteously little compared to a modern 
scholar that it is possible, with sufficient application, to 
trace all the sources of his information. Albertus was 
among the best, not the worst, of medieval men of science, 
and yet, in what is perhaps his most important scientific 
contribution, the De Animalibus, it has been possible to 
trace almost every sentence to its source. It is precisely 
this fact which makes medieval literature such an interesting 
medium for demonstrating cultural movements. 

The fifth Essay in the volume, that on Early Herbals, 
appeared in its original form as an article in the Edinburgh 


X11 PREFACE 


Review in 1923. ‘The author there expressed those general 
views which he developed in detail—producing the evidence 
for his conclusions—in an elaborately illustrated article 
in the Journal of Hellenic Studies in July 1927. The Essay 
in this volume contains a number of these illustrations, 
together with some others. The history of the herbal 
is continuous from Greek to modern times. An immense 
number of manuscripts survives, and the author has ex- 
amined scores of them. ‘The herbals provide a peculiarly 
favourable medium for tracing the passage of tradition 
from people to people. Their texts are simple, their 
motives are obvious, such ideas as they contain are of an 
easily comprehensible order, and the tradition of the figures 
with which they are adorned can be traced even more 
readily than the tradition of the texts themselves. The 
entry and recession of the magical element can be 
closely watched in these herbals. We have been able to do 
no more than touch the fringe of a very large subject, but 
we would recommend the study of the herbal to the young 
folklorist as a little trodden and very attractive field. | 

The sixth Essay, on The Visions of St. Hildegard, appeared 
originally in 1917 in Vol. 1 of the author’s Studies in the 
History and Method of Science. It went out of print very 
rapidly and has not since been republished. This particular 
article aroused a good deal of criticism, but the theory of 
the pathological basis of these visions has, we believe, been 
generally accepted by those who have read it with any 
knowledge of the condition known as ‘ Migraine.’ The 
article has been rearranged and largely rewritten. Most 
of the criticism directed against the article had to do with 
the author’s rejection of the genuineness of certain works 
ascribed to Hildegard. The matter turns on points that 
are not likely to engage the reader of this volume, and 
their discussion is here omitted. ‘The chief interest of 
Hildegard’s visions are (a) the cosmic theory on which they 
are based, (b) the extremely involved presentation of that 
theory, (c) the remarkably close way in which the minia- 


PREFACE Xill 


tures of two manuscripts visualize the text and suggest a 
living tradition arising with the prophetess herself, and (d) 
the pathological basis of the visions. On all these points 
the author’s conclusions seem to him to have stood the test 
of time and he therefore reproduces them in much their 
original form. 

In the scheme of this book Hildegard is of importance as 
representing an early attempt at something like a coherent 
philosophy, intended to cover the appearances of the 
material universe. As such her work is, in fact, Science, 
and with her we have left the Dark Ages and the Dawn 
has begun. In placing this view before the reader we 
would ask him not to be deterred by what is, for us, the 
extremely bizarre manner of presentment of her views. 
She is feeling her way to a rational explanation of her 
world, and the fact that her solution is not our solution and 
that she is grotesquely wrong on matters of fact, should 
not blind us to her intellectual merits. The same criticisms 
could, after all, be made of Aristotle or of any other early 
thinker. | 

There is another point in the history of science of which 
Hildegard provides an interesting: illustration. As 1s 
pointed out in more than one place in this volume, the 
important event in the history of science in the Middle 
Ages is the arrival of the Arabian learning. It was the 
Arabian influence that finally set the intellect of Western 
Europe on the high road to the Renaissance. This volume 
deals with the earlier medieval period, the pre-Arabian 
age, the ‘ Dark Age’ as we may call it, and Hildegard marks 
the parting of the ways. She has had no access to an 
Arabian writer, even in Latin translation, but she does live 
in a world in which indirect Arabian influences are begin- 
ning to make themselves felt. Some of these influences 
we have been able to trace. 

The volume closes with an Essay on The School of 
Salerno and its Legends. This article was contributed by 
Mrs. Singer, in collaboration with the author, as an ‘ His- 


XIV PREFACE 


torical Revision ’ to the issue of History in October 1925. 
At Salerno was the first institution in Europe that had 
the semblance of a University. It was but a semblance. 
Nevertheless, the small amount of first-hand observation 
that was going on at Salerno as early as the eleventh century 
marks the first upward trend of the human mind from 
the degradation of the Dark Ages. Moreover, the school 
of Salerno exhibits the new Arabian influence at an earlier 
date than any other centre of learning. ‘These are facts 
which can hardly be gainsaid. But the glamour of Saler- 
nitan history has proved a centre around which legends 
have clustered. Some of these, which are still widely 
spread, have utterly corrupted many accounts of the 
history of the school. In any event that history is ex- 
tremely dim, but it becomes at least a little less dim by the 
dispersal of the cloud of legend. ‘The somewhat humorous 
element which seems to cling to Salerno, and to lend the 
stories of it a peculiar aroma, make it a not unsuitable 
theme on which to end. 

The author has to thank first of all Mrs. Singer, whose 
name appeared as a collaborator in the last Essay, but who 
has, in fact, been his collaborator in them all. For 
permission to reproduce these essays he expresses his thanks 
to Mr. Cyril Bailey, Mr. F. S. Marvin, the Clarendon 
Press, the Council of the British Academy, the Council 
of the Royal Society of Medicine, the editors of the Edin- 
burgh Review, of the Fournal of Hellenic Studies and of 
History, and to Messrs. Longmans & Co. 

CHARLES SINGER. 
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON. 
May, 1928. 


Sages 2 Bay a3; 
CONTENTS 
eo - 2 OE Sa ee 


LIST OF COLOURED FUATES =" % ; : 
LIST OF FIGURES .. j ‘ é ‘ 
ak SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE . 


Koa THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON. 

IV. EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE . 
MeiueeerERBATS’ © 56) 
. THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN . 
i . THE SCHOOL OF SALERNO AND ITS LEGENDS 
Bs _ INDEX OF NAMES Scale FR 


xV 


i. ‘THE DARK AGES “AND THE DAWN OF SCIENCE 


° 


COLOURED PLATES 


FACING PAGE 
VISION OF THE FALL OF THE ANGELS. Froma MS. of Hilde- 
gard’s Scivias at Wiesbaden, written at Bingen about 1180. See 
page 232 . ; ; : , ; ‘ ‘ : Frontispiece 


CELESTIAL INFLUENCES ON MEN, ANIMALS, AND PLANTS. 
From a MS. of Hildegard’s Liber Divinorum Operum nie Hominis, 
written about 1200. See pages 58 and 218-221. ° Pea, | 


Ill. SCORPION AND SNAKE FIGHTING. From an Anglo-Saxon 


5 


Rea 


. 


XI. 


XII. 


XIII. 
XIV. 


Herbal of about 1050. See page 187 . ; : 4 . o . 533 


MUGWORT = ARTEMISIA PONTICA. From the same MS. 
See page 187. : . ° . ° : ‘ ° ~ 140 


HENNEBELLE = HYOSCYAMUS RETICULATUS. From the 
same MS. See pages 187 and 190 ‘ - : : ; s sEge 


‘VIPERINA’ = CARDUUS MARIANUS. From a Herbal written 

at Bury St. Edmunds about 1120. See pages 187 and 190 7 fee 
“CAMEDRUM’ = TEUCRIUM CAMAEDRYS. From the same 

MS. See page 187 . : : R . . : : - 156 
‘PAEONIA’ = OROBUS SP. From the same MS. See page 188 . 170 


‘ MERCURY’ BRINGS THE HERB ELECTROPION TO ‘ HOMER.’ 
From an Anglo-Norman Herbal of the thirteenth century. See 


page IgI . i ; ; : F i . ; ‘ «. Tae 
ACENTAUR HOLDS THE PLANT CENTAURY. From the same 

MS. Seepage tg1 . : . ‘ . 182 
VISION OF THE TRINITY. From a MS. of Hildegard’s Scivias at 

Wiesbaden, written at Bingen about 1180. See page 232 ; - 199 
VISION OF THE SEDENS LUCIDUS. From the same MS. See 

page 233 . F é : . : 204 


VISION OF THE ZELUS DEI. From the same MS. See page 233 . 220 


VISION OF THE HEAVENLY CITY. From the same MS. See 
page 233 . . ° . : . . ° ° - o 238 


Xvi 


I. ‘ ? - 
2and 3. PILASTERS. From Lateran Museum : . ‘i facing 


FIGURES 


SILVER BOWL. From Pompeii 


PAGE 


4 
4. HEAD OF PARTHENON STEED : . : . between 8 and 9 
5. EWE AND LAMB. From Wellhead at Vienna , . between 8 and 9 
6. SACRIFICIAL BEASTS. From the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus 

facing 12 
7. SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS. From Pompeii . : ; facing 22 
8. PLAN OF COURSE OF CLOACA MAXIMA : : pe 
9. OUTLET OF CLOACA MAXIMA INTO TIBER ; facing 26 

10. DIAGRAM OF PUMP. From Bolsena . ‘ ‘ : we 28 

11. ROMAN LATRINE AT TIMGAD : : facing 28 

12, ADVANCED DRESSING STATION. From Trajan’ s Clint facing 28 

13. SITE OF TEMPLE OF AESCULAPIUS ON ISLAND OF ST. BARTO- 

LOMMEO ; ° : : facing 30 

14. PLAN OF ROMAN HOSPITAL AT NOVAESIUM a a 

15. BONE COUNTERS. From Pompeii : 33 

16. ROMAN ABACUS : ; : : : : 4 ‘ 33 

17, ROMAN GROMA ; : : ° 34 

18. MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS. From Pompeii 45 

19. ROMAN TAXICAB. From description of Vitruvius . ’ . oe 480 

20. ROMAN STEELYARD : ‘ ; : ; ee, 

21. ROMAN CRANE : : : : : : facing 38 

22. PORTION OF PEUTINGER TABLE 42 

23. GAUL AND SOUTHERN ENGLAND. Showing I Roman + Roads 43 

24. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO POMPONIUS MELA 45 

25. MAP OF WESTERN EUROPE. From descriptions of Tacitus 48 

26. MAP OF BRITISH ISLES. From descriptions of Ptolemy -. 49 

27. SUNDIAL AT POMPEII WITH OSCAN INSCRIPTIONS . Ae i 

28. ROMAN SUNDIAL. From Gaul . < 52 

29. DIAGRAM OF WATER CLOCK. From es of Vitruvius 53 

30. TENTH CENTURY ZODIACAL SCHEME . ‘ : facing 64 

31. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE . 66 

32. SPHERES OF RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE about A.D. 750 . 7O 

33. SPHERES OF RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE about 1150 de 1 

34. SPHERES OF RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE about 1500 . 7 dE 

35. MAP ILLUSTRATING RECESSION OF ISLAM IN SPAIN . PEGS 

36. ITALY about 1200 77 

37. FARRAGUT, A pone INTERMEDIARY BETWEEN BAST ‘AND 

WEST : ; : : facing 82 

38, FRENCH ZODIACAL SCHEME of about 1400 . . facing 84 


xvii 


XVIll FIGURES 


39» 
40. 
41. 
42. 
43. 


44. 
45. 


46. 


47- 
48. 
49- 


50. 


51. 


52. 
53+ 
54- 


55+ 


DANTE’S SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE . ‘ ; ‘ ° 


MONDINO DISSECTING . : : : ‘ : 
LEONARDO’S PARABOLIC COMPASS : ‘ - : 
FRONTISPIECE OF WORK BY REGIOMONTANUS . facing 
DRAWING BY LEONARDO OF CHILD IN ITS MOTHER’S 

WOMB. ‘ : F facing 
DRAWING OF LEONARDO OF “DREDGE FOR CANAL facing 


DIAGRAM OF SOLAR SYSTEM. From the De revolutionibus orbium 


celestium of Copernicus . ~ : 
TITLE-PAGE OF VESALIUS DE FABRICA ‘CORPORIS HUMANI 
2 facing 
CORSLET OF IRON RINGS é ; : ; i facing 
DETAIL OF FIG. 47 . : : ; ; : ‘ facing 
FACE OF FRANKS CASKET . . . ‘ Facing 


MEDICAL SCENE. From Anglo-Saxon MS. of eleventh century. 


DIAGRAM OF SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON MEDICINE AND 
MAGIC. ‘ ‘ : 


DIAGRAM OF BYRHTFERTH OF RAMSEY ‘ ; ; : 
TRANSLATION OF FIG. 52 P ‘ . 


DIAGRAM OF THE ‘ SPHERE OF PYTHAGORAS,’ From a we 
century English MS. 


‘SPHERE OF APULEIUS.’ Froma Rene English MS. F . 


56 and 57. TWO CELTIC STONE CROSSES 


58. 
39° 


6o. 
61. 
62. 
63. 
64. 
65. 
66. P 
67. 


CIRCLEOFCOLUMCILLE. Fromaneleventh-century Pee MS. 
SNAKE AND SCORPION FIGHTING. From a ee French 


MS. . : ‘ ‘ : ‘ : : : Sacing 
‘ARTEMISIA.’ From the same MS. ‘ . : ‘ Sacing 
MANDRAKE. From an Italian fifteenth-century MS. . . Sacing 
MANDRAKE. From a Greek tenth-century MS. : ‘ facing 
MANDRAKE. From an Italian printed book, fifteenth century facing 
MANDRAKE. From an Anglo-Saxon eleventh-century MS. Facing 
‘CIRCLE OF PETOSIRIS.’ From an Anglo-Saxon twelfth-century MS. . 

PALZOLITHIC PLANT DRAWING . > : F ; : 
EGYPTIAN PRE-DYNASTIC PALETTE . : ‘ 


68 and 69. EGYPTIAN FIRST DYNASTY CARVINGS OF CEREALS 


70. 


72. 


73¢ 


PLANTS FROM ‘SYRIAN GARDEN’ OF THOTHMES III ‘ 


. RHIZOTOMISTS GATHERING HERBS ON A MOUNTAIN SIDE. 
From a fifteenth-century MS. from Savoy : ; : 

ADONIS AESTIVALIS, From the adage Amicia MS., cal add 
century : . 

ARISTOLOCHIA PALLIDA. From the same MS. 


177 
177 


1 Me 
ie 


74: 
75- 
76. 
TT: 
78. 
79: 
80. 
SI. 
82. 
83. 
84. 
85. 
86. 
87. 
88. 


89. 
90. 
91. 
92. 
93- 
94- 


95: 
96. 
97- 
98. 
99- 
100. 


Io!t. 


102. 
103. 


104. 


105. 
106. 


107. 
108, 


FIGURES 


ASARUM EUROPAEUM. From the same MS. 

SCENE REPRESENTING DIOSCORIDES, ETC. From the same MS. 

CASTOR-OIL PLANT. From the same MS. 

YOUNG BEAN PLANT. From the same MS. 

GERANIUM MOLLE. From the same MS. : : ‘ 
ARISTOLOCHIA. From a Latin MS. of about 600 _ . : facing 


BLACKBERRY. From the same MS. ‘ : ‘ : facing 
DETAIL. From Botticelli’s ‘ Primavera ’ . ; facing 
DRAWING OF COLUMBINE BY LEONARDO ; : facing 
SCABIOUS, BY JEAN DE BOURDICHON . ‘ : facing 
OAK BRANCH, BY THE SAME : : : : facing 
CAMPANULA, BY THE SAME . ; : ; : facing 
VIOLETS, BY THE SAME : , : facing 


WOODCUT from the Buch der Natur, sie pe 1475 - 

WALLFLOWER WITH DODDER. From the Gart der Chemabed 
Mayence, 1485 . : : : : : 

YELLOW FLAG. From ie same . 

ANEMONE. From Brunfels . 

ELECAMPANE. From Fuchs 

COWSLIP. From Fuchs. ‘ 

MAP OF HILDEGARD COUNTRY 

THE SPHERE OF THE EARTH. From Lucca MS. of Hildegard, 
written about 1200 : y : facing 

SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE. od Wiesbaden MS. of eile 
written about 1180 

ZONES OF THE WORLD. Boon Aeon ae Landsber s Gene 
Deliciarum . 

THE LAST JUDGEMENT, ices Heldelberg M MS. of Hildegard written 
about 1180 . ‘ : facing 

MAN’S FALL. From a same e MS. : ; ; : facing 

THE NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH. Fromthe same MS. facing 

DIAGRAM OF HILDEGARD’S SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE . 

MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM. From Lucca MS. of Hildegard, 
written about 1200 . : facing 

NOUS, HYLE, AND THE GODHEAD. Feotn Ne same MS. facing 

NOUS, THE MACROCOSM AND THE MICROCOSM. From the 


same MS. . : ; : facing 
AN ANATOMICAL FIGURE OF T HE BARLY THIRTEENTH 
CENTURY : F ; - facing 


THE MICROCOSM. From Hissade de Caden s Hortus Deliciarum 


ARRIVAL OF THE SOUL. From papi MS. of Hildegard, 
written about 1180 : ; facing 


DEPARTURE OF THE SOUL. Bai ee same MS. ‘ Sacing 
DAYS OF CREATION. From the same MS. . ‘ . facing 


X1X 
PAGE 
178 
179 
180 
180 
181 
184 
184 
186 
188 
190 
190 
192 
192 
193 


194 
194 
195 
196 
197 
200 


202 
206 
208 


208 
210 
210 
213 


214 
216 


222 


224 
227 


228 
230 
232 


I 
SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 


The Roman Attitude to Nature . 4 ; 


. J, Sie eae 
§ 2. Latin Works on General Science pens 
§ 3. Medical and Veterinary Knowledge Per? 
§ 4. Hygiene and Organization of Public Health aPpS25 
§ 5. Mathematics and Physical Sciences - p. 32 
§ 6. Geography . . ‘ en ae P ‘ , . Pe 40 
§ 7. Astronomy and Cosmology : : ; : : PSO 


§ 1. The Roman Attitude to Nature 


TuE scientific idea, the conception of a reasonable universe, 
came to the peoples of Central Italy at a much later date 
than that at which it began to influence the Greeks of the 
Eastern Mediterranean and of Southern Italy. With the 
Romans pure science always remained somewhat of an 
exotic; it was applied science that attracted them. The 
determining factor in the development of science within 
the Empire was the absorption of the Kingdom of the 
Ptolemies, whose capital, Alexandria, was and long remained 
the scientific head-quarters of the world. Yet despite 
the stimulus that followed on the contact with Alexandrian 
thought, Rome produced no great creative scientist. It 
is in the distribution and dissemination of the Greek 
wisdom rather than its development that we see the réle 
of Rome. 

Yet though Rome cannot be said to rival Greece in pure 
science, it must be allowed that in an allied department her 
achievements are remarkable. Among the Greeks art, in 
its highest development, excelled in idealistic representa- 
tion—as did science in abstract reasoning. Man, the main 

I 


2 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


theme of the Greek painter and sculptor, became godlike; 
the lower creation is less often represented, and when it 
is, the beauty of the animal is reflected from the nobility 
of its master [Fig. 4]. As for plants, they are practically 
omitted from Greek art save in connexion with orna- 
ment. 

Now this contrasts profoundly with the development of 
art at Rome. The character of Augustan art was deter- 
mined by the character of the Augustan country gentleman. 
The great Roman landowner, like his representative nearer 
home, was no great hand at philosophizing ; least of all 
was he given to what would have seemed to him that useless 
spinning of arguments about the essential nature of things 
which provided a leading motive in Greek scientific litera- 
ture. But if no philosopher, he was a lover of the country- 
side, an observer by temper in that field which the Greek 
had taken to investigating because he believed it to lie on 
the road to knowledge. He had it in him to become a 
shrewd and close-observing naturalist, one who paid atten- 
tion to the habits of plants and animals perhaps more than 
to the minute details of their form, but seldom given to 
general ideas about them. 

This Roman spirit, slow to acquire any appreciation of 
the scientific attitude, yielded little in the way of scientific 
results. Yet the art which Rome produced in the Augustan 
age is instinct with the study of bird and beast and flower 
and tree. Nature is treated as she had never been before. 
_ The affection of Virgil for his bees, his cattle, and his herbs 
recalls the power and faithfulness with which creatures 
and plants are represented in Augustan art. Thus panels 
of the tomb of the Haterii in the Lateran Museum [Figs. 2 
and 3] render to perfection the habit of a young wind-blown 
wild-rose. The buds are particularly natural, but the opened 
flowers strangely show four petals instead of five. At the 
top of one of the pillars three bees may be seen drinking 
from the hollow in the capital, while a fourth has been seized 
in the claw of a bird. ‘Two other birds—perhaps ‘ Bee- 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 3 


eaters, Merops apiaster—pursue bees among the branches 
below. ‘The scene might have been prepared to illustrate 
passages in Virgil’s fourth Georgic. 


There are many instances of the faithful imitation of 
nature in Augustan art. It would not be easy to find any 
parallel in Greek art of the best period to the treatment 
of plants in some of the metal work of Pompeii [Fig. 1]. 
Even the brutality of a Cato finds reflection in the procession 
of fatted sacrificial beasts on the altar of Domitius Aheno- 
barbus [Fig. 6]. Compare the ewe and her young of the 
well-head at Vienna [Fig. 5] 
with the noble head of the 
Parthenon steed [Fig. 4]; and 
you have the contrast epigram- 
matically set forth. The feeling 
of the Augustan artist is that of 
one studying nature as some- 
thing quite outside man; it is > 
the sheep herself who tends her _F¢. 1.—Silver bowl ornamented 

: ° with vine-shoots. From Pompeii, 
young ; her love is not a senti- after Overbeck. 
ment reflected from mankind. 
The Augustan artist has produced a nature study. The 
Greek has wrought a creature that sets forth the glory of 
the god. 


When Hellenism first began to influence Roman thought, 
about the time of the second Punic war (c. 214 B.Cc.), Latin 
literature had as yet no scientific element. During the 
period between 200 and 189 B.c. Rome broke the power 
of Alexander’s successors and established her protectorate 
throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. ‘The influence 
of Greek ideas now grew rapidly. With the triumph after 
the battle of Pydna (168 B.c.) numerous Greek hostages, 
educated and of good family, came to Rome, and the library 
of the Macedonian king which was brought with them 
made a nucleus for the infiltration of Roman society by 
Greek wisdom. 


4 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


For long there were those who struggled against this 
development without being able to stem it. Among them 
was Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.c.). He prepared 
a sort of encyclopaedia for the use of his son, in which he 
endeavoured to show that the old Roman literature could 
hold its own against this newfangled material from Greece. 
Of that treatise only fragments have survived, but in his 
book De re rustica we possess the oldest Latin prose work 
that has come down to us. Its contents are very miscel- 
laneous, relating principally to rural economy, but dealing 
also with cookery recipes, magical formulae, medical 
prescriptions, and much other strange material which shows 
how little scientific was the traditional Roman attitude. — 

Although the relation to science improved as time went 
on and all educated men learned Greek and were affected 
by Hellenic philosophy, it is probable that the general 
scientific principles of the Greeks as expressed in the writings 
of the Hippocratic, Aristotelian, and Alexandrian schools 


were seldom understood even by educated Romans. The 


prevalent attitude towards nature among the Latin-speaking 
upper classes, whether Italian or provincial, was expressed 
‘ by the Stoic creed. That system, based on a rigid concep- 
tion of the interrelation of the different parts of the world, 
provided little stimulus for the acquisition of new know- 
ledge or for anything in the way of research. Thus, in place 
of knowledge accumulating progressively on a basis of a 
wide and far-reaching theory, we get either a type of exact 
but intellectually motiveless observation or a rejection of 
all knowledge not of practical importance. 

There have been various attempts to explain why the 
Romans did not continue the scientific work of the Greeks. 
It is a strange phenomenon, for the value of the experi- 
mental method was still being demonstrated by the achieve- 
ments of the Alexandrians. That school continued its 
activities under Roman rule and was the ultimate source of 
the only important Latin medical work that has come down 
to us, the De re medica of Celsus. It has been said that the 


¥ 
a 


me) 

Pit 

a Stes 
a: ees 
San 1) 


"Sai 


Fics. 2 AND 3.—PILASTERS IN LATERAN MUSEUM 
Birds pursue bees among branches of wild rose. 
Compare Virgil, Georgics, iv. ll. 8-29. 

See pages 2 and 3. 


4] 


eae 
ro 


“te 


rei + Pe 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 5 


Roman mind could find no time from conquest and adminis- 
tration to attend to scientific matters, but this will not ex- 
plain the whole matter, for there were those among the 
Romans who were able to answer the no less exacting claims 
of philosophy, of literature and, above all, of rhetoric. 
Much too has been made of the view that regards the 
scientific pause as due to the lack of instruments of precision. 
This, however, hardly explains the facts, for scientific instru- 
ments are at least as much the result as the cause of the 
application of scientific method. The matter seems 
rather to have lain deep in the Roman character. It was 
wrapped up in the nature of the favourite Roman philosophy, 
Stoicism. It needs to be considered in general relation to 
the Roman psychology and is not improbably related to 
the Roman obsession for Rhetoric. 

In general we may say that Roman science appears at 
its best in the department of ‘ Nature Study’ and at its 
weakest in ‘ Pure Mathematics.’ The success or failure 
of the Romans in any scientific field may be roughly gauged 
by its nearness to one or other of these disciplines. The 
gauge must be biased, however, by the Roman desire for 
‘useful studies.’ There was for instance, as we shall 
see, a special development in certain departments of 


Geography (p. 40). 


§ 2. Latin Works on General Sctence 


We have several works by Latins which deal with the 
implications of science in general. These, however, seldom 
involve any expert knowledge of natural phenomena, and 
are concerned rather with the philosophical relations of the 
science of their day than with science itself, as we under- 
stand that word to-day. Of such works the most striking 
and widely read is the De rerum natura of Lucretius 
(c. 95-55 B.C.). The man is aflame with his theme and 
exhibits a veritable missionary zeal. Yet, however magnifi- 
cent as literature may be the work of Lucretius, and how- 


6 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


ever important as our best representative of Epicurean 
views, it is too close an imitation of Greek philosophy to 
be of the highest value for our immediate purpose. It 
neither records first-hand observations nor does it represent 
an attitude of mind that can be considered as typically 
Roman. Lucretius, nevertheless, is interesting for us as 
the only Latin writer who gives us a complete and coherent 
scheme of natural knowledge. | 

The attention of the scientific reader of Lucretius will 
naturally be drawn to his atomic view of matter. The 
atomic conception was very ancient and had been taught 
by Leucippus (ff. c. 450 B.c.), Democritus (fl. ¢. 410 B.C.), 
and Epicurus (342-270 B.C.) among the Greeks. Lucretius, — 
following these writers, explains the origin of the world 
as due to the interaction of atoms, and this interaction, he 
believes, is without the intervention of any creative intelli- 
gence. This is not the place to discuss the position of the 
gods in the Lucretian scheme, but we may note that even 
mental phenomena are for him of atomic origin and there 
is no real existence save atoms and ‘the void’ (imane). 
‘Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam.’ Nothing ts 
ever begotten of nothing by divine will. Everything springs 
from ‘semina certa,’ determinate units. The genesis of all 
things is typified by the generation of organic beings and 
the species of plants and animals give us models for all pro- 
cesses and natural laws. This conception of generation 
has its converse. ‘ Haud igitur possunt ad nilum quaeque 
reverti.’ Things cannot then ever be turned to naught. Such 
an attitude involves that ‘ indestructibility of matter’ which, 
despite modern changes in our conceptions, is the historical 
foundation on which our chemical and physical knowledge 
has been built. | 

The resemblance of the Lucretian theory to modern 
atomic views is, however, more apparent than real; not 
only are the atoms of Lucretius of different shapes and sizes 
but also he knows nothing of the definite laws by which they 
are held together as molecules, he has no inkling of the real 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 7 


nature of chemical combination, and he is without that 
‘doctrine of energy’ that is so characteristic a feature in 
all modern physical theory. Moreover, his work had little 
direct influence on the development of the modern doctrine. 
Epicurean thought has not, in fact, historically been very 
favourable to scientific development. The atomic view of 
matter was practically lost during the Middle Ages, and 
Aristotelian philosophy, which involved the doctrine of 
the continuity of matter, was paramount for centuries. 
Atomic views, it is true, were known to a few ‘ Arabian’ 
philosophers, e.g. Averroes (1126-98) and Maimonides 
(1135-1204), but their general standpoint was abhorrent 
to the scholastics. Lucretius was rediscovered by the 
scholar Poggio in 1418 and deeply affected the philosophy 
of the Renaissance. The influence of that philosophy 
waned with the great physical synthesis of the seventeenth 
century with which the name of Galileo (1564-1642) is 
associated. Atomic views continued to be held by a few 
isolated thinkers, but modern scientific atomism arose 
almost independent of the ancient sources. John Dalton 
(1766-1844), the father of modern atomism, was probably 
not directly influenced by Lucretius. 

Yet there is one scientific department in which the 
influence of Lucretius on Renaissance philosophy may be 
said to have borne more direct fruit. Lucretius concludes 
his work with a description of the plague at Athens in 430 
B.C., and in describing this visitation he follows very closely 
the account of Thucydides, and the Lucretian version is 
of interest as having contributed something to modern 
views of the nature of infection. In discussing the nature of 
the plague Lucretius demands ‘ What is its cause?’ and 
he answers—working out his atomic theory here also—that 
* just as there are seeds (semina) of things helpful to our life, 
so, for sure, others fly about that cause disease and death.’ 

Now in the sixteenth century Lucretius, whose work had 
been printed as early as 1473, was studied by an eminent 
Veronese physician, Girolamo Fracastoro (1483-1553). 


8 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


That acute investigator had absorbed much from the ancient 


atomic philosophy. Pondering on the nature of epidemics 
—of which he was a close and accurate student—Fracastoro 
developed a theory that such diseases were due to seminaria, 
‘seed-stores,’ the separate semina or ‘ seeds’ of which 
reproduced their like in infected victims to whose bodies 


they were carried by fomites or ‘ foci of infection.’ These fe 


‘seeds of disease’ of Fracastoro bore some analogy to the 
Lucretian atoms. ; 

Fracastoro followed Lucretius in denying any essential 
distinction between the living and the non-living. For him 


vital phenomena were explained as a product of atomic 


activity. Such views became widely diffused in the six- 
teenth century, though they were seldom fully understood. 
As a result of misunderstanding ‘ atom ’ became a synonym 
for ‘ living mite’ or ‘ animalcule ’ and is thus encountered 
in the writings of Shakespeare, for instance (see As You 
Like It, 1. v. 13, and contrast with 11. ii. 246). Much of 
Fracastoro’s theory can be read into Lucretius, but the 
Renaissance physician developed it with newly acquired 
knowledge and with a skill peculiarly his own. The theory 
of infection remained much where Fracastoro left it until 
quite modern times, when it assumed a new meaning at 
the magic touch of Louis Pasteur (1822-95). 

Some have seen in Lucretius the beginnings of a theory 
of evolution. He certainly exhibits a scala naturae, a 
‘ladder of life’ somewhat similar to that which may be 


discerned in the writings of Aristotle. ‘The earth produces — 


out of herself first plants and then animals of ever higher 
and higher type. ‘Even as down and hair and bristles 
are first formed on the limbs of beasts . . . so the newborn 
earth raised up herbage and shrubs first, and thereafter 


produced the races of mortal things.’ ‘This idea of “ spon-— 


taneous generation ’ was almost inevitable until the realm 


of minute invisible life had been explored by means of the 
microscope which was not invented until 1608. Itis thus — 


no wonder that Lucretius follows Aristotle and all antiquity — 


Fic. 4.—HEAD OF PARTHENON STEED 
See page 3. 


[Between 


Fic. 5—EWE AND LAMB. From a well-head at Vienna. 
See page 3. 


pp. 8 and 9] 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 9 


in assuring us that ‘ even now many animals spring forth 
from the earth, formed by rains and the heat of the sun.’ 

Did Lucretius take the matter further and did he have 
any conception of lower forms passing into higher forms ? 
In a sense he certainly did. Moreover, he invoked for the 
process a mechanism for the clearer explanation of which 
the world had to await the arrival of Darwin. Yet not- 
withstanding our familiarity with the idea of ‘ survival of 
the fittest,’ the Lucretian view of the manner in which the 
more perfect creatures reached their present state must 
sound very strange to modern ears :— 

‘Many monsters earth then essayed to create, born with 
strange faces and strange limbs ; the man-woman, between 
the two, yet not either, sundered from both sexes ; things 
bereft of feet; things without hands; things dumb ; 
things blind; things locked together by the clinging of 
the limbs so that they could not move nor avoid calamity 
nor take what they needed. Monsters and prodigies she 
would thus create, yet vainly, since nature forbade their 
increase, nor could they reach the bloom of age nor find 
food. . . . Many races of living creatures then perished 
nor could beget nor propagate, for whatever animals now 
feed on the breath of life, either craft or courage or speed 
has preserved their kind from the beginning of their being.’ 

When we turn to the phenomena which Lucretius has 
chosen for special description we cannot fail to be struck 
with the fact that he has been drawn to those which present 
something of the magnificent, dramatic, or cataclysmic. 
There is nothing of the quiet and minute observer about 
him. Thunder and lightning, water-spout, volcano and 
thunderbolt, suffocating vapours and great pestilences— 
these are the themes he selects for description. Almost 
the sole exception is his account of the magnet. This has 
a special interest because the passage drew the attention of 
William Gilbert (1540-1603), physician to Queen Elizabeth. 
Gilbert’s De magnete, the first important work on experi- 
mental science to be printed in England, appeared in 1600. 


Io FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


He quotes Lucretius on the magnet and exhibits Lucretian 
influence (see pp. 109-10). 


The remarkable composition of Lucretius takes an 
isolated place in Latin scientific literature. More charac- 
teristic are the Rerum rusticarum libri III of Varro and 
two works of the first Christian century, the Naturalis 
historia of Gaius Plinius Secundus (A.D. 23-79), the most 
complete and extensive work of its kind that has come down 
to us from antiquity, and the Quaestiones naturales of Lucius 
Annaeus Seneca (3 B.C.-A.D. 65). : 


Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 B.C.) was born at Reate 
in the Sabine country, where the old Roman qualities are 
supposed to have lingered longest. He was educated by 
L. Aelius Stilo, the first systematic Latin philologist and 
antiquary. Later he went to Athens and came under 
Platonic influence ; he exhibits, however, throughout his 
works some Stoic leanings. Varro wrote encyclopaedically 
on the sciences and his works were the prototype of the 
numerous mediaeval works on the ‘liberal arts.’ He 
distinguished mine of these studies, namely, grammar, 
dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, 
medicine, and architecture. Of these the last two were not 
recognized by Cassiodorus (A.D. 490-585), Martianus 
Capella (c. A.D. 500), and Isidore (A.D. 560-636), who handed 
down the tradition to the Middle Ages, and the number 
of liberal arts was thus reduced to seven (see pp. 68-9). 

Varro, like Cato, tried to collect Latin learning and set 
it over against the Greek. Of the works of Varro unfortu- 
nately only two have been preserved, the Res rusticae and 
a part of the De lingua latina. If Varro depends on Cato, 
he develops a surer judgement based on more experience 
and knowledge. Asa friend of Julius Caesar, whose literary 
and scientific tastes he shared, we should expect from him 
this higher and more tolerant standard. He was employed 
by Caesar in arranging the great stores of Greek and Latin 
literature for the vast library which he intended to found. 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE HII 


The Res rusticae was written by Varro in his eightieth 
year. In the first book he devotes himself to the general 
theme of agriculture, in the second he discusses cattle and 
farm animals, and in the third bees, fish, and a number 
of wild creatures. ‘The old scholar records, to some extent, 
his own experience, but he has collected his material mainly 
from the writings of others. He thus already exhibits the 
derivative tendency which is so marked among later Latin 
writers on scientific topics. His interests are wider than 
might perhaps be expected, nor does he confine his discus- 
sion to his own country but makes comparisons with other 
districts and lands. The presentation is enlivened by 
humour and the scene does not lack animation, though the 
mechanism of the dialogue often works stiffly. He uses 
every opportunity to bring in etymology, and he rejoices 
in artificial separations and divisions, so that in general the 
work gives one very much the impression conveyed by many 
treatises of mediaeval origin. Yet his style is always lucid 
and is sometimes vigorous and racy. 

Among the more pleasing of the pictures that Varro draws 
is that of the life of bees. This, however, is far inferior 
in accuracy to that set forth by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) in 
the Historia animalium, and contains nothing that is not 
to be found in the poetic account of Varro’s younger con- 
temporary, Virgil (7o-19 B.c.). Among the more remark- 
able passages in the work is one in which sanguine observers 
have perceived an anticipation of the modern discovery of 
the nature of malaria. ‘In building houses,’ he says, 
‘you must avoid the neighbourhood of marshy places . . . 
because when the marshes begin to dry they engender a 
multitude of invisible insects which are introduced into the 
mouth and nostrils with the inhaled air and occasion serious 
illnesses.’ 

Varro, along with the other Latin agricultural writers, 
early drew the attention of the scholars of the Renaissance. 
His work was transcribed by some unknown Veronese 
humanist as early as 1329. Cato, Columella, and Palladius 


I2 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


were soon added to form a collection Scriptores ret rusticae. 
After the invention of printing this collection was widely 
circulated. The first edition appeared at Venice in 1472, 
and many subsequent issues, bearing the names of dis- 
tinguished scholars, poured from the presses during the 
hundred years which followed. 


In the next writer we have to consider, the elder Pliny, 
the Greek leaven has worked further than in Varro. Pliny 
was born at Como in A.D. 23 and was educated by P. Pom- 
ponius Secundus, a poet and military man who inspired him 
with a love of learning. He studied botany in Rome in 
the garden of Antonius Castor. Coming under the influence 
of Seneca he studied philosophy and rhetoric, and practised 
as an advocate. Pliny saw military service in Germany, 
visited Gaul, and became a procurator in Spain. After 
a stay in Rome during which he completed his Natural 
History, dedicating it to Titus, he was appointed by Vespasian 
prefect of the fleet at Misenum. He was stationed there 
at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius which overwhelmed 
Pompeii and Herculaneum in A.D. 79, and he owed his 
death to his desire to observe that phenomenon more 
closely. Pliny’s education, his career, his opinions, and his 
character are all typical of the Italian tradition of his day. 


As a writer this erudite and much travelled man exhibits . 


great industry and an interest in natural phenomena that 
is quite uncontrolled by any real scientific standards. 
Learned and curious, Pliny is entirely devoid of critical 
faculty. In his Naturalis historia he collected an enormous 
amount of material, entirely unsifted, and this work his 
nephew rightly spoke of as an ‘ opus diffusum, eruditum, 
nec minus varium quam ipsa natura.’ By Gibbon it was 
described as ‘ that immense register where Pliny has de- 
posited the discoveries, the arts and the errors of mankind.’ 
It was drawn from about 2,000 works—most of them now 
lost—by 146 Roman and 326 Greek authors. The Natural 


History of Pliny, to which we shall frequently refer, may — 


[er 


"€ ased s0g  *(HUANOT) SQUUVAONHHV SNILINOG AO UV.LIV AHL WOUI—9 “O14 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE oe 


be divided into eight sections which are intended to cover 
the whole of physical knowledge. The character and 
relative length of these sections is significant. They are 
distributed thus : 


(1) Book 1. Introductory. 
Gaiatye h2. Cosmology. 

(3) , 3-6. Geography. 

(C8 RT Anthropology. 

(5) ,, 8-11. Zoology. 

iy, 12-19... Botany. 

(7) ,, 20-32. Medicine. 

(8) ,, 33-37. Mineralogy and Art. 


The main thought that goes through Pliny’s book is that 
nature serves man. Natural objects are hardly described as 
such but only in relation to man. All things have their 
‘uses.’ ‘Nature and the earth,’ he says, ‘ fill us with 
admiration . . . as we contemplate the great variety of 
plants and find that they are created for the wants or enjoy- 
ment of mankind.’ This world of wonder is, however, 
effectively without a God and works by rule—though it is 
a somewhat crazy rule which these disordered, credulous, 
wonder-loving volumes set before us. ‘ It is mere folly to 
inquire into the nature of God . . . ridiculous to suppose 
that the great head of all things regards human affairs.’ 
Yet in this world in which he lives man himself occupies 
a quite peculiar and not always enviable position. ‘ While 
other animals,’ he says, ‘ have an instinctive knowledge 
of their own powers . . . only man is helpless without 
instruction. Healone desires honours and possessions . . . 
he alone provides for his grave and even for his future after 
death . . . All other animals live at peace with their kind 
... but verily with man, most of his misfortunes are 
man’s doings.’—Man the beast of prey! Lupus est homo 
homini, non homo quom qualis sit non noscit, ‘ A man is not 
human but vermin to a stranger ’—so Plautus (died 184 B.C.) 
had written long ago. 


14 © FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Many of the matters on which Pliny expresses a judge- 
ment would have been impressed on him in the manifold 
life of Imperial Rome. Many of the animals he discusses 
were brought to the capital from the furthest ends of the 
earth, for the arena or for the kitchen. So too with plants. 
Pliny describes a botanic garden kept by a Roman for the 
purpose of ascertaining the medical and allied properties 
of herbs. In descriptions of living creatures Pliny goes 
back to Aristotle and Theophrastus, but there is no syste- 
matic building of the subject and he is scientifically far 
inferior to his sources. Medical plants are treated in greatest 
detail and he holds the view that all plants have their own 
special medical powers. The thought that nature exists 
for man constantly recurs. His philosophy, which accords 
in general with the Stoic scheme, is largely drowned 
and lost in his love of detail and is often submerged 
in rhetoric. 


Seneca (3 B.C.-A.D. 65) has gone over to the Greeks even 
more fully than either Varro or Pliny. Lucius Annaeus 
Seneca was born at Cordova and his mother appears to have 
been a native Spanish lady. At an early age he came to 
Rome and there he spent practically all his life. He came 
under Stoic influence and made his mark as an advocate. 
Seneca became praetor and consul, acted as tutor to Nero, 
and is said to have amassed a colossal fortune. After his 
pupil’s accession he showed himself subservient to that 
monster’s designs. Nero ultimately turned against him, 
and Seneca, having been ordered to prepare for death, 
anticipated his sentence. His end is described in a powerful 
passage by ‘Tacitus. 

A provincial and a member of one of the newer families, 
a brilliant rhetorician with a passion for philosophy, of 
which he was an eloquent but unsystematic exponent, 
a man whose undoubted balance and judgement had been 
earned in affairs rather than in action, with an interest in 
nature rather in its cosmical than in its detailed aspects, 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 15 


Seneca provides in many respects an interesting contrast 
to his contemporary Pliny. If inferior in character, Seneca 
is the larger-minded of the two. His work is less typical 
perhaps of the Roman attitude, but it is the more philo- 
sophical and far more critical. Yet his Quaestiones naturales, 
even more than the Naturalis historia of Pliny, is borrowed 
material. ‘The number of direct observations that it contains 
is small. Seneca is distinctly less credulous than Pliny, 
but just for this reason he fails to preserve so much interest- 
ing material. The chief importance of his work is that it 
exhibits the attitude to nature of the more philosophical— 
and, we would add, rhetorical—Romans of his day. 

Seneca is a Stoic, but does not hesitate to criticize the 
opinions of the school to which it is evident he is but loosely 
attached. The subject of the Quaestiones naturales is a 
general account of natural phenomena, but as such it is 
ill arranged and imperfect. It deals chiefly with Astronomy 
and Meteorology together with Physical Geography, ex- 
hibiting a special interest in earthquakes and allied pheno- 
mena. Seneca fell into that trap which had caught so many 
Greeks before him, the confusion of philosophy with 
science. It was a habit of many ancient writers that they 
would only consider phenomena in relation to their con- 
ception of the world scheme as a whole. Even the medical 
system of antiquity suffered from this tendency, though 
Celsus assures us that it had been his master Hippocrates 
himself ‘ who first separated medicine from philosophy.’ 
Our author, who was called by Dante ‘ Seneca morale,’ 
was especially interested in Ethics, a moralist first and physi- 
cist or scientist afterwards. Physics—which for him meant 
a general description of the Universe—led to a knowledge of 
man’s destiny and through that to a consideration of man’s 
duty. ‘Some moral significance,’ he tells us, ‘ should 
be attached to all studies and all discussion. Whether we 
seek into the secrets of nature or treat of divine things, the 
soul must be delivered from its errors and from time to 
time reassured.’ 


16 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


At the end of each book Seneca sums up the moral to 
be derived from the phenomena investigated. This is 
often of the most distant and strained character. ‘Thus, 
terminating his discussion of the phenomena of light, he 
asks, ‘ What were nature’s purposes in providing material 
capable of receiving and reflecting images?’ And he 
answers, ‘ Firstly her motive was to show us the sun with 
his glare dulled, since our eyes are too weak to gaze at him 
direct, and without something to reflect him we should 
be wholly ignorant of his shape . . . Secondly we should 
be unable to see or investigate that conjunction of the two 
heavenly bodies by which the daylight is wont to be inter- 
rupted [in eclipses], unless we could examine the reflections 
of sun and moon in basins on the ground with comparative 
freedom. Thirdly mirrors were discovered in order that 
man might know himself.’ 

Such a point of view appealed greatly to the Middle Ages. 
It was a standpoint very acceptable to the mediaeval Church, 
by which Seneca was regarded as a Christian. He was 
included by St. Jerome among the scriptores ecclesiastict, 
and is frequently quoted by later Christian writers. But 
this exclusively ethical attitude is inconsistent with the 
effective advancement of knowledge and has been one 
of the greatest enemies of science. In spite of the 
nobility of his sentiments, in spite of his lip-service to 
the advancement of knowledge, in spite of his belief 
in human destiny, Seneca’s ethical attitude could do 
nothing to stay the downfall of ancient wisdom. To 
that downfall and to Seneca’s relation to it we shall 
later return. 

The works of Pliny and Seneca differ from those of most 
of the authors that we have to consider in that they were 
not ‘ discovered ’ by the Renaissance humanists. Pliny and — 
Seneca were indeed never lost, and their works formed 
part of the reading of the Dark and Middle Ages. For the 
understanding of mediaeval thought a knowledge of these 
authors is necessary. 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 17 


§ 3. Medical and Veterinary Knowledge 


The original native Roman medical system was quite 
devoid of scientific elements and was that of a people of the 
lower culture. Interwoven, as is all primitive medicine, 
with ideas that trespass on the domain of religion, it 
possessed that multitude of ‘ specialist deities ’ which was 
so charactefistic of the Roman cults. Thus Fever had 
three temples in Rome, and was supplicated as the goddess 
Febris and flatteringly addressed as Febris diva, Febris sancta, 
Febris magna. Foul odours were invoked in the name of 
Mephitis, to whom a temple was erected at a place where 
asphyxiating fumes emerged from the earth. Lassitude 
was implored as Fessonia. Uterina guarded the womb, 
and Lucina, assisted by a whole group of goddesses, had 
charge of childbirth. The entire pantheon of disease and 
physiological function was presided over by the Dea Salus, 
whose temple was on one of the summits of the Quirinalis. 
She was the deity who took the public health under her 
supervision. 

Some of the surviving records of the original Roman 
medicine are of even lower material. Cato the Censor 
assures us that the ancient Rome, which he lauded, was 
sine medicis sed non sine medicina, ‘ healthy without doctors.’ 
He advised that to a sick ox be given three grains of salt, 
three laurel leaves, three rue leaves, and various other threes 
for three consecutive days, both patient and physician 
fasting and the drug being given when both were standing 
erect. For human patients his panacea was cabbage. He 
sought to reduce dislocations by reciting over them the 
euphonious formula, 


Huat hanat huat ista pista sista domiabo damnaustra. 


Students of folk-lore have shown that magical jingles can 
often be traced back to a forgotten tongue, but that of Cato 
suggests the expletive lingua franca still used by the victims 
of such accidents ! 
The entire external aspect of Roman medicine was grad- 
" 


18 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


ually changed by the advent of Greek science. There is 
evidence, however, that the change hardly penetrated below 
the upper classes. Thus in medical works of the fourth 
and fifth centuries of the Christian era we still encounter 
numerous survivals of the older material. ‘There are also 
many references in St. Augustine’s De civitate det which 
show that the ancient beliefs were widely current in Italy 
even among the well-to-do of his day. After the fall of 
the Empire they lingered among the barbaric peoples that 
entered into its heritage. Nor are they yet extinct, for pre- 
scriptions and practices of Pliny, of Marcellus Empiricus, 
and of Sextus Placitus Papyriensis may still be traced in the 
folk-customs and folk-beliefs of our own land and in the 
sayings and doings of continental peasantry. 


Notwithstanding the large medical field that the Western 
Empire provided, and the wide acceptance of Greek medi- 
cine by the upper classes, it is remarkable that the Latin- 
speaking peoples produced no eminent physician. During 
the Republic medical education had been entirely a matter 
of private teaching. The relation of pupil and master 
exhibited by the Hippocratic oath was evidently that which 
prevailed under the early Empire. The initiate declared, 
‘I will reckon him who taught me this Art as dear to me as 
those who bore me. I will look upon his offspring as my 
own brethren and will teach them this art, if they would 
learn it, without fee or stipulation. By precept, lecture, 
and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a know- 
ledge of this art to my own sons, and to those of my teacher, 
and to disciples bound by a stipulation and an oath, accord- 
ing to the Law of Medicine, but to none other ’ (see p. 22). 

Despite the Ionic Greek dress in which this formula is 
known to us, there is evidence that it is of Imperial date 
and of Roman rather than of Greek origin. The very 
form of the oath suggests the arrangements which were 
gradually made for medical instruction at Rome. The 
first important teacher there was the Greek Asclepiades 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE I9g 


of Bithynia (died c. 40 B.C.), a contemporary of Lucretius 
and like him an Epicurean. Asclepiades introduced the 
atomic view of Democritus into medicine. He deeply 
influenced the course of later medical thought, ridiculed the 
Hippocratic attitude of relying on the vis medicatrix naturae, 
“the healing power of nature ’ which he regarded as a mere 
“meditation on death,’ and urged that active measures 
were needed for the process of cure to be cito, tuto, zucunde, 
“seemly, swift, and sure.’ He founded a regular school at 
Rome which continued after him. 

An outline of the history of this school and of others 
formed in Rome can be made out with some approach to 
clearness. At first the school was the mere personal follow- 
ing of the physician, who took his pupils and apprentices 
round with him on his visits. At a later stage such groups 
combined to form societies or colleges, where questions of 
the art were debated. ‘Towards the end of the reign of 
Augustus or the beginning of that of ‘Tiberius, these societies 
constructed for themselves a meeting-place on the Esquiline, 
the so-called Schola medicorum. It had a president with the 
title of archiatrus and a secretary known as the tabularius 
or scriba. Finally the emperors built halls or auditoria 
for the teaching of medicine. The professors at first 
received only the pupils’ fees. It was not until the time of 
Vespasian (emperor A.D. 70-9) that medical teachers were 
given a salary at the public expense. The system was 
extended by Hadrian (117-38) and Alexander Severus 
(222-35). 

Thus Rome became a centre of medical instruction. 
After a time subsidiary centres were established in other 
Italian towns. From Italy the custom spread and we meet 
traces of such schools at the half Greek Marseilles, as well 
as at Bordeaux, Arles, Nimes, Lyons, and Saragossa. From 
Marseilles, which had been the home of the geographers 
and astronomers Pytheas and Euthymenes, came the 
physicians Crinas and Charmis. The latter, though accus- 
tomed to bathe his patients in ice-cold water in the depth 


20 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


of winter, received one of the highest medical fees mentioned 
in antiquity. Marseilles too was the home of Demosthenes, 
the most renowned of ancient oculists, who lived under 
Nero, and whose works were much sought after and sur- 
vived at least as late as the fourteenth century. Bordeaux 
did itself no great honour in giving to the world Marcellus 
Empiricus, who had high office under Theodosius I (379- 
395) and Arcadius (396-408), and has left us a book which 
represents wellnigh the low water-mark of superstitious 
folly. For the most part, however, these provincial schools 
produced workaday medical men, few of whose writings 
have come down tous. ‘They were perhaps largely training 
places for the army surgeons. That class seldom had 
literary interests, though Dioscorides, one of the most 
prominent physicians of antiquity and one who earned the 
respect of Galen and has deeply influenced the modern 
pharmacopoeia, served in the army under Nero. Dios- 
corides, however, wrote in Greek, and his work was probably 
not translated until the sixth century. 


Before we leave the topic of medical instruction it will 
be in place to say a word concerning the study of anatomy. 
The practical study of that subject had been carried on at 
Alexandria, beginning with Herophilus and Erasistratus 
about 300 B.c. Physiology had been experimentally studied, 
and the terrible charge of vivisection of human beings is 
made against the school of Alexandria by ‘Tertullian 
(c. 155—-c. 222) and Augustine (354-430), who are supported 
by the very damning evidence of Celsus. Dissection of the 
dead body was still practised at Alexandria towards the end 
of the first century B.c., but it is probable that it had ceased 
by the middle of the second century a.D. It is clear that it 
was on the bodies of animals that Galen (A.D. 130-200), for 
instance, relied for his anatomical knowledge. Considering 
the indifference to human life which the Romans often 
exhibited, considering their brutality to slaves and the 
opportunities offered by gladiatorial combats, considering 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 2I 


the obvious value of anatomical knowledge for surgical 
practice and the organization of the military medical service 
of the Empire, it is truly remarkable that the anatomical 
knowledge of antiquity was thus allowed to lapse. It did 
not revive until the rise of the mediaeval universities (p. 94). 


We may now turn to the literature of medicine. The 
earliest scientific medical work in Latin is the De re medica 
of Celsus which was prepared about A.D. 30. It is of great 
interest as our one adequate representative of the surgery 
of the Alexandrian period. Written in excellent Latin, 
it is in many ways the most readable and well-arranged 
ancient medical work that we have. All the evidence, 
however, points to this work of Celsus having been a com- 
pilation if not a translation from the Greek, and the sole 
surviving part of a complete encyclopaedia of knowledge. 
Many of its phrases are closely reminiscent of the * Hippo- 
cratic Collection.’ The ethical tone is high and the general 
line of treatment sensible and humane. Celsus, though 
almost unknown to the Middle Ages, was the first classical 
medical writer to be printed, his work appearing at Florence 
in 1478. 

The treatise of Celsus is divided into eight books. It 
opens with an interesting account of the history of medicine 
containing a comparison of the rival sects of the so-called 
‘Dogmatic’ and ‘Empiric’ physicians. The first two 
books deal with diet and the general principles of thera- 
peutics and pathology, the third and fourth discuss internal 
diseases, the fifth and sixth external diseases. ‘The seventh 
and eighth books, devoted to surgery, are perhaps the 
most valuable. Celsus professes himself a follower of 
Asclepiades of Bithynia (died c. 40 B.c.), but, unlike his 
master, he by no means despises the Hippocratic expectant 
method of ‘ waiting on the disease.’ In many matters his 
comparative boldness as a surgeon will draw the attention 
of the modern medical reader. Thus he describes plastic 
operations on the face and mouth, and the removal of 


22 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


polypus from the nose. He tells too of the very dangerous 
operations for extirpating a goitre and of cutting for stone. 
He gives an excellent account of what might be thought 
the modern operation for removal of tonsils. Noteworthy 
also is his description of dental practice, which includes 
the wiring of loose teeth and an account of what appears 
to have been a dental mirror. An idea of the surgical instru- 
ments in use in his time can be obtained from those which 
have been recovered from Pompeii, some of which are dis- 
played in Fig. 7. At the top is shown a pair of forceps of 
a form used in removing a long uvula. Below, from left 
to right, are arranged a long forceps with pointed ends, a 
small pair of scissors, a pair of dental forceps, and a small 
pair of tweezers. To the right there is placed a pair of blunt 
forceps above and an instrument for scarification below. 
The remaining Latin medical writings that we possess 
are not of high scientific value. Surviving works are as- 
cribed to Antonius Musa, the medical attendant of Augustus. 
The attribution, however, is spurious, and, after Celsus, 
the first Latin medical author whose writings have survived 
is probably Scribonius Largus, a physician of the so-called 
‘Empiric’ school. He practised at Rome under Claudius, 
whom he accompanied in A.D. 43 on his expedition to 
Britain, and he was physician to the Empress Messalina. 
His receipt book is derived entirely from Greek sources 
of the lower type. He follows the unscientific method, 
which became very popular in the Middle Ages, of beginning 
with the head and working down to the feet, entirely dis- 
regarding the relations and functions of the organs. This 
method of classifying diseases by their position in the body 
is very ancient and is encountered in an Egyptian medical 
papyrus of about 1700 B.c. Scribonius is the earliest 
writer who makes mention of the so-called Hippocratic oath, 
and has been praised because some of the unguents that he — 
employed for wounds had antiseptic qualities. , 
After Scribonius Largus the most ancient Latin medical 
work is that of Pliny. He was a scorner of medical science 


22] 


Fic. 7.—SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS FROM POMPEII 


By the courtesy of Prof. K. Sudhoff. 
See page 22. 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 23 


and the starveling Greeks who practised it. ‘ Medicine, 
in spite of its lucrativeness,’ says Pliny, “is the one art of 
Greeks that the serious Roman has so far refused to culti- 
vate. Few of our fellow-citizens have been willing even to 
touch it, and if they do so they desert at once to the Greeks 
.. . Unfortunately there is no law to punish ignorant 
physicians, and capital punishment is never inflicted on 
them. Yet they learn by our suffering and experiment by 
putting us to death.’ The collection of Pliny, which was to 
be a substitute for the works of these wretched Greeks, con- 
sists of a vast series of remedies built on the supposedly 
firm ground of ‘ experience.’ It is based on no theory, it 
is supported by no doctrine, it is founded on no experi- 
ment. Yet it is the prototype of the medical output of 
the next fifteen hundred years. The cry of Pliny for 
‘experience’ as against ‘theory’ has been plaintively 
echoed by the ‘ practical ’ man down the ages. Yet there 
are subjects and there are conditions in which the man 
without a theory may be the most unpractical of all. 
Medicine is such a subject and disease is such a condition. 

When ‘ experience’ is invoked in medical matters by 
Pliny and by later writers, the absence of the parallel to 
the ‘ experience ’ of many other affairs of life is often missed. 
In other matters the so-called experience is usually under 
some sort of control, and therefore in fact approaches the 
character of ‘ experiment.’ Experience is thus frequently 
but the result of a series of observations provoquées. With 
clinical medicine, so long as it is uncontrolled by the ancil- 
lary sciences, this can seldom be the case. A single instance 
from Pliny will suffice. ‘ The herb dittany,’ he says, ‘ has 
the power to extract arrows. This was proved by stags 
who had been struck by these missiles which were loosened 
when they fed on this plant.’ Had Pliny made any effort to 
verify such a statement ? He had take his ‘ experience,’ in 
fact, from an interpolated and spurious passage of a work 
by Theophrastus, and he omits to mention his source. Pre- 
possession with the idea of the value of such experience 


24 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


led Pliny and the ages which followed him into innumerable 
absurdities into which it would be profitless to follow them. 
But if the multitudinous remedies of Pliny are always 
useless and often disgusting, yet his book contains some 
valuable material for the history of medicine, culled from 
many sources now lost. His very discursiveness and love 
of gossip are our gain, and though he can do nothing to 
advance medical knowledge he gives us much insight into 
medical practice in antiquity. 

The latter medical writings in the Latin language are 
hardly worth notice here. Some, such as those of Priscianus 
(c. 380), Marcellus (c. 400), and (pseudo-)Apuleius Barbarus 
(? c. 400), contemptible in themselves, are of interest for the 
influence they had on after ages. One writer, Quintus 
Serenus Sammonicus (c. 250), is remarkable for having 
introduced into Latin the foolish custom of writing medical 
works in verse. He is also the first to record the famous 
device or charm known as the Abracadabra. Another late 
Latin medical writer, Vindicianus (c. 400), less futile than 
most, was the friend of St. Augustine. Important for a 
special reason is Caelius Aurelianus, a Numidian physician 
of the fifth century. His work is of philological interest 
and is also noticeable as one of the few remnants of the so- 
called ‘ Methodist ’ school. It is, however, a translation 
from the Greek Soranus and not a native work. The last 
Latin medical writer of antiquity is probably Cassius Felix, 
an African, whose language is interesting but whose work, 
written in 447, consists only of extracts from earlier writers. 


Veterinary medicine was a topic on which the Roman 
agricultural interests concentrated considerable attention. 
An important source for much of their material was a work 
by the Carthaginian Mago (c. 200 B.c.), which was trans- 
lated into both Latin and Greek. The earlier Latin works 
on agriculture—Cato, Varro, Columella—anaturally include 
many passages which discuss the treatment of sick animals, 
and there is evidence that they draw largely on Mago. 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 25 


The Georgics of Virgil (written 31 B.C.) is really a manual 
of agriculture in verse. In the third book of the Georgics 
Virgil deals with the care and breeding of animals, and he 
speaks of epizootic diseases such as scabies in sheep, foot- 
rot, anthrax, rabies, and sheep-rot. Much veterinary 
information may be gleaned from the works of Pliny. A 
curious collection of remedies for diseases of cattle has come 
down to us under the name of Gargilius Martialis 
(c. A.D. 200) ; it is interesting as an example of late Roman 
veterinary medicine with little or no Greek influence. The 
agricultural writer Palladius, who flourished in the fourth 
century, gives an account of the points of horses and de- 
scribes how to tell their age by the teeth. The work 
exercised some influence on the Middle Ages and was 
translated into English as early as 1420. 

By far the best known and most complete Latin veterinary 
work is the Digestorum artis mulomedicinae Libri IV by 
Flavius Vegetius Renatus (383-450), who is known also as 
a writer on military topics. The treatise is remarkably 
scientific and well arranged, considering the period at which 
it was composed ; especially noteworthy is the contempt 
expressed in it for incantations and other superstitious 
practices. It had been studied by Petrarch and was the 
first veterinary work to be printed (Rome, 1487). Vegetius 
has been called the ‘ father of veterinary science’; it is 
certain, however, that he was a compiler, and among his 
sources is the Mulomedicinia Chironis translated from 
Greek by one Claudius Hermerus (c. 300 a.D.?). The 
work of Hermerus survives and is of great philological 
importance as a record of Low Latin linguistic forms. 


§ 4. Hygiene and Organization of Public Health 


If in Medicine itself the Roman achieved but little, in 
organization of medical service, and especially in the depart- 
ment which deals with the public health, his position is far 
more honourable. All the writers on architecture—Varro, 


26 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Vitruvius, and Columella—give much attention to the 
orientation, position, and drainage of buildings, and from an 
early date sanitation and public health drew the attention 
of statesmen. Considering the dread of the neighbourhood 
of marshes on the part of these practical sanitarians and in 
view of modern knowledge of the mosquito-borne character 
of malaria, it is entertaining to find the mosquito net 
(conopeum) ridiculed by the poets Horace, Juvenal, and 
Propertius ! 

Sanitation was a feature of Roman life. Rome. was 
already provided with cloacae or subterranean sewers in 
_ the age of the Tarquins (6th cent. B.c.). Similar conduits 
have been found in excavations in Crete of Minoan date, 
but there is evidence that the idea reached Rome from 


(a A 
Fic. 8.—Plan of the course of the Cloaca Maxima through the city 
to its outlet in the Tiber. 


Etruscan sources. ‘Tradition is probably just in referring 
the construction of the Cloaca maxima itself, the main drain 
of Rome [Figs. 8 and 9], to the period of monarchy. 
The growth of hygienic ideas is seen in the interdict by 
the ‘ Law of the Twelve Tables ’ (450 B.C.) against burials 
within the city walls. It is noteworthy that this order is 
made without reference to any physician. The same absence 
of professional medical intervention may be noted in the 
instructions issued to the aediles to attend to the cleanliness 
of the streets and to the distribution of water. Nor is any 
medical help or opinion invoked by the ancient Lex regia, 


attributed to Numa, which directed the opening of the body 
in the hope of extracting a living child in the case of a 


pregnant woman who had died. It is the origin of the so- 
called ‘ Caesarean section,’ the method by which Caesar 
himself is said to have been brought into the world. 


[9z 


‘oz oded vag «= ‘IsouRITg Aq SUlAvIZUD UR WOT] 


ANOU SO WAATS NIVW AHL ‘VWIXVW VOVOTD AHL dO YdaLL OLIN LATLAO— 6 2214 


* 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 27 


At the date of these decrees physicians in Rome were 
either slaves or in an entirely subordinate position. Their 
status was greatly improved by Julius Caesar, who, Sue- 
tonius (¢c. A.D. 120) tells us, ‘ conferred citizenship on all 
who practised medicine at Rome... to make them 
more desirous of living in the city and to induce others to 
resort to it.’ The finest monument to the Roman care 
for the public health stands yet for all to see in the remains 
of the fourteen great aqueducts which supplied the city 
with 300,000,000 gallons of potable water daily. No 
modern city is better equipped in this regard. The Roman 
military writer Sextus Julius Frontinus (c. A.D. 40-103) 
has left us a good account of these aqueducts and their 
history in his De aquis urbis Romae. The distribution of 
water to individual houses was also well cared for, and 
excellent specimens of Roman plumbing may be seen in 
the British Museum [Fig. ro]. A large number of other 
sanitary devices have survived in many sites and are par- 
ticularly well seen at Timgad in Algeria [Fig. 11]. 

Under the early Empire a definite public medical service 
was constituted. Public physicians or archiatri, as they 
were later called, were appointed to the various towns and 
institutions. Alexander Severus (222-35) organized the 
medical service of the imperial house. The archiaters of 
the palace were sometimes promoted to provincial governor- 
ships, as happened to Ausonius (c. 320), father of the poet, 
who became prefect of Illyria, or to Vindicianus (c. 400), 
the friend of Augustine, who became proconsul of Africa. 
At a yet later date the first archiater of the sacred palace 
was invested with the function of judging disputes between 
physicians. ‘We decorate you from this moment,’ says 
Cassiodorus (490-585), to one of them in his usual pompous 
and roundabout style, ‘with the honour of being head 
of the archiaters, that you alone among the masters of health 
may be pre-eminent, and that all those who exercise their 
ingenuity on the subtleties of mutual contradictions may 
refer to your judgement. Be you the arbiter of this exalted 


28 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


art, and adjudge the conflicts of those who have formerly 
taken only their passions for judge. In healing them you 
will heal the sick if you terminate their quarrels prudently. 
It is a great privilege for you that these able men should 
be submitted to your authority and that you should be 
honoured among those whom all the world reveres.’ 

In Greek lands state physicians had been known for many 
centuries and are mentioned by Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.). 
In the days of the Empire the custom of appointing district 


Plunger Raised 


Entry Valve Open Exit Valve Closed 


: 
g 


Plunger Lowered. 
Entry Valve Closed. Exit Valve Open. 


Frc. 10.—Diagram of double action bronze pump from Bolsena in Etruria, now 
in the British Museum, The pump is worked by alternating plungers raised and 
lowered by a single rocking beam which, for simplicity, is here omitted. The 
bottoms of the cylinders in which the plungers move were connected by pipes 
with the water supply and are furnished with flap valves opening upward. When 
the plunger was raised a vacuum was created and the water lifted the valve and rushed 
in. When the plunger reached the highest point the valve fell again and retained the 
water. When the plunger descended it forced the water from the cylinder into the 
central delivery tube through another flap valve in the horizontal pipe. 


physicians spread early from Italy to Gaul and to the other 
provinces. A statute of Antoninus of about the year A.D. 160 © 
regulates the appointment of these physicians. ‘ The 
smallest towns may have five physicians who may enjoy 
immunity from taxation. . . . The more important towns 
may have seven. . . . The towns of larger grade may have 
ten. . . . It is suitable for the largest number to be allowed 
to the capital cities, the second to cities with a court of 


Fic. 11.—A ROMAN LATRINE AT TIMGAD IN ALGERIA 
Flushed with water from a constant fountain. See page 27. 


Fic. 12.—ADVANCED DRESSING STATION 


From Trajan’s Column. 


Left : a wounded legionary is aided by two comrades. 
Right : a surgeon bandages the thigh of an auxiliary. 
See page 30. 


Ph yas f Peres 6. 
ha re 4 
pie Dr cd 2 at (15, wh. 
‘ ; as ee MP 
J at a tn 5 > } ai _ 
bet et eee & mS ae 
oy 5 “ 3 é Ma 
‘ , 2m 
, , | ¥ ‘ M4 ‘ 
ch . 
: ; ; 
“3 bog? , ; 
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fae eS eee. 
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SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 29 


justice. . . . These numbers may not be surpassed either 
by an ordinance of the curia or by any other means soever, 
but it is lawful to diminish them if this is done in view of 
the civil charges.’ The main duty of these physicians was 
to attend to the needs of the poor. In the code of Justinian 
(A.D. 533) there is an article urging them to give this service 
cheerfully rather than the more subservient attendance 
on the wealthy. Their salaries were fixed by the decurzones 
or municipal councillors. ‘They were encouraged to under- 
take the training of pupils. Inscriptions prove the existence 
of such municipal archiatri in many towns, and attest the 
respect in which they were held. 


It is in connexion with the army that we see the Roman 
medical system at its best. The actual medical organiza- 
tion of the Roman army is, however, a very debatable topic, 
and information concerning it has to be gathered from very 
scattered sources. ‘The matter may be thus summed up. 
‘Each of the 25-30 legions of 10 cohorts (numbering 
6,500~7,000 men in all) had a legionary physician (medicus 
_ legionis); each of the g pretorian cohorts, the 4 urban 
cohorts, and the 7 cohorts of vigiles (who acted as police 
and firemen in the city) had four cohort surgeons (medicz 
cohortis). Every body of auxiliary troops and every ship 
of the pretorian fleet had also its physician. All these 
physicians, as part of the military establishment, were 
regarded as immunes, exempt from guard and combat-duty 
or day-labour, and ranked among the principales (non- 
commissioned officers). In the pretorian and city cohorts, 
they were required to be Roman citizens, while the physicians 
of the vigiles and auxiliary troops, serving in Italy and 
the provinces, could be freedmen or foreigners. For this 
reason, the staff surgeons of these latter organizations were 
called medici ordinarii. The legionary physicians were 
all of equal rank, had no other medical superiors, and were 
subordinated only to the camp commander (praefectus 
castrorum) or, in his absence, to the tribunes of the legion. 


30 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


The social status of the medical staff in this military hier- — 
archy was that of the innumerable grades of non-commis- 
sioned personnel and of the highly elaborated bureaucracy 
attached to the army, which included accountants, notaries, 
registrars, secretaries, and civilian functionaries of all kinds’ 
(F. H. Garrison). The actual administration of first-aid 
by Roman military surgeons is represented on Trajan’s 
column [Fig. 12]. 


i a” GP tad i. 
r - oe a = . 
; , wf 2 es we x 
aes ae: is, ’ 4 > i ge ao 
of nat Oe ela nr ‘ oo Fie cer 
Y eee ee ear. I ee 
Ye Nae a ae rs a . o 


ma 


The great contribution of Rome to medicine—and it is 
a very great one—is the hospital system. It is a scheme that 
naturally arose out of the Roman genius for organization 
and is connected with the Roman military system. Among 
the Greeks iatreia, ‘ surgeries,’ were well known; they 
were, however, the private property of the medical man. 
Larger institutions were connected with the Aesculapian 
temples, but there is no evidence of scientific medical treat- 
ment in these places. In Republican times the Romans — 
were no better off, and the work of Cato shows that there 
was no provision for sick slaves. A temple to Aesculapius 
had been established on an island of the Tiber in Republican 
times. ‘The island was ship-like in form. Part of it had 
been hewn to the shape of a ship’s poop whereon the staff 
and serpent of Aesculapius and the head of the god were 
carved ; remains of these symbols can be seen there to this 
day [Fig. 13]. ‘ On this island of Aesculapius,’ Suetonius — 
tells us, ‘ certain men exposed their sick and worn-out slaves 
because of the trouble of treating them. The Emperor 
Claudius (A.D. 41-54), however, decreed that such slaves 
were free, and, if they recovered, they should not return to 
the control of their masters.’ Thus the island became a 
place of refuge for the sick poor. We may regard it as an 
early form of public hospital. 

Columella (first century A.D.) speaks of valetudinaria, ees 
‘ infirmaries,’ for such persons, and gives humane directions _ 
for their management. Seneca tells us that valetudinaria 
were in use even by free Romans. The excavations at 


Loner .- yee at : 
4 7 > oe ; } . : Me er ; 
hn ee ee uel ies re kts ee ~ on Re er oe tee 
PI ee NO Sg ee ee er eS Ae 


[of 


‘of aded vag ‘Isauvsitg Aq SurAvssus ue WOT ‘oowWO[O EY *S JO PURIST ayT-diys 943 UO 


TV.LIdSOH NVWOU LSYId AHL “SNQIdVINDSAV JO AIdNAL AO ALIS—'t1 “ony 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 31 


Pompeii show that a physician’s house might even be built 
somewhat on the lines of a modern ‘ nursing home.’ There 
are passages in Galen (A.D. 130-200) which seem to imply 
that it was in the provinces that private institutions first 
developed into subventioned public hospitals. 

This development of public hospitals naturally early 
affected military life. At first sick soldiers had been sent 
home for treatment. As the Roman frontiers spread ever 
wider this became impossible and military hospitals were 


Detail of 
Construction of Wards 


Fic. 14.—General Plan of Roman Military Hospital at Novaesium near Diisseldorf. 
The assigning of the uses to the different parts of the building is conjectural. 


founded at important strategic points. The sites of several 
such military hospitals have been excavated. The earliest 
that has come to light is of the first century and is at Carnun- 
tum, about twenty miles from Vienna. The best explored 
is at Novaesium [Fig. 14] on the lower Rhine near Diissel- 
dorf. The military hospital at Novaesium was founded 
about 100 A.D., but has later elements. It is built on the 
corridor system. Entering from the north between the 
administrative offices we come on a large hall on which 
succeeds a long narrow room placed along the axis of the 
building. This room was probably used as a refectory. 


32 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


It is surrounded on three sides by a corridor out of which 
open chambers for the sick. Around this series of chambers 
runs another corridor also along three sides of the building, 
and around this outer corridor again is another series of 
chambers. ‘These outer chambers are peculiarly arranged 
so that they do not open directly into the corridor, but each 
pair is reached through a small vestibule. (See detail in 
Fig. 14.) The arrangement must be related to sanitation, 
and traces of the drainage system have been uncovered. 
The general scheme is much in advance of any military 
hospital until quite modern times. 

From the military valetudinarium it was no great step 
to the construction of similar institutions for the numerous 
imperial officials and their families in the provincial towns. 
Motives of benevolence, too, seem to have gradually come 
in, and finally public hospitals were founded in many 
localities. The idea naturally passed on to Christian times, 
and the pious foundation of hospitals for the sick and out- 
cast in the Middle Ages is to be traced back to these Roman 
valetudinaria. The first charitable institution of this kind 
concerning which we have clear information was established 
at Rome in the fourth century by a Christian lady named 
Fabiola of whom we learn from St. Jerome. The plan 
of such a hospital projected at St. Gall in the early years of 
the ninth century has survived. It reminds us in many 
respects of the early Roman military hospitals. These 
mediaeval hospitals for the sick must naturally be distin- 
guished from the even more numerous ‘ spitals ’ for travellers 
and pilgrims, the idea of which may perhaps be traced back 
to the rest-houses along the strategic roads of the Empire. 


§ 5. Mathematics and Physical Sciences 


As with all other peoples, the first system of numeration 
adopted by the Romans was based on finger counting. From 
it was developed a method of mechanical reckoning on a 
counting board. The simplest form was a board covered 
with sand divided into columns by the finger or by the stylus, 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 33 


counters being used in calculation. Cicero, referring to 
this method, speaks of an expert calculator as eruditum 
attigisse pulverem, ‘clever at handling the sand.’ The 
counters employed had graven upon them figures of the 
hand in various posi- 
tions to represent 
different numbers. 
“Many such counters 
have survived [Fig. 
15] and their sym- 
bols are identical with 
those which remained 


Fic. 15.—Carved Bone Counters employed in 
calculation, found in Pompeii and now in the 


in vogue till late British Museum. The positions of the hand 


indicate numbers, and are identical with symbols 


mediaeval times. still used in England in the sixteenth century. 


A more compli- 
cated apparatus was the true abacus. This began as a 
board with a series of grooves in which pebbles or calculi 
could be moved up and down, hence the verb calculo and 
‘the modern use of calculate. The actual form of the 
Roman abacus is well known, and several excellently 

preserved specimens have 
been recovered. In _ its 
| | I | | I \ | more developed form the 
abacus consisted of an 
xlcolsclso co C xX I os 
3 
g 


upper row of short and a 
Fic. 16.—A late form of Roman Abacus. 


lower row of long rods 
[Fig. 16]. Each of the 
short rods had a single 
perforated bead running on 
it and each of the longer 
ones four  such_ beads. 
The first rod on the right was marked for units, the next 
on its left for tens, and so on up toamillion. Its mode of 
application was very much more complicated than might 
be imagined. Persius had both forms of calculating 
board in mind when he derides the zany qui abaco 
numeros et secto in pulvere metas scit risisse, ‘ who sniggers 


3 


34 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


at the figures on the abacus or the ridges of furrowed 
sand.’ 

The whole mathematical system of antiquity was handi- 
capped by its inadequate notation. The Roman numerals 
were, it is believed, derived from Etruscan sources. ‘The 
decimal system with which we are nowadays familiar is of 
Indian origin, and reached Europe through Arabic channels 
in the Middle Ages. The Greeks often used geometrical 
methods where we should 
invoke the aid of algebra, 
and their mathematical de- 
velopments made little im- 
pression on the Romans. 
How slight was the mathe- 
matical knowledge absorbed 
by Latin scientific authors 
may be gathered from 
Geometrica and Arithmetica 
bearing the name of Boethius 
(A.D. 480-524). Those ele- 
mentary works ascribed to 
‘the last of the ancients ’ 
represent the mathematical 
legacy of antiquity to the 


NE gar de WG | 
Fic. 17.—The Groma. Reconstructed earlier Middle Ages. Even 


from descriptions, remains, and ancient 
representations. when Rome had _ world 


dominion, Cicero bemoaned 
that ‘the Greek mathematicians lead the field in pure 
geometry while we limit ourselves to the practice of 
reckoning and measuring.’ 

The Romans held that the art of mensuration was at least 
as old as their city, and it was said to have been first prac- 
tised by the priests for ecclesiastical purposes at a very early 
date. The knowledge of the subject advanced in Imperial 
times and a regular school for the teaching of surveying 
was established. The chief instrument in general use was 
known as the groma. It consisted of two lineals fixed at 


1 
St ae 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 35 


right angles and arranged to turn horizontally about a 
vertical pivot. From the end of each lineal a plummet was 
suspended. One of the lineals was used for sighting and 
the other to determine the direction in the field at right 
angles to the first. As both agricultural and town-planning 
were mainly on rectangular lines this instrument was of 
wide application. A figure of it has been found on the grave 
of a Roman surveyor, and an actual specimen has been 
recovered from Pompeii [Fig. 17]. 

That site has also yielded a number of compasses and other 
apparatus employed in mensuration [Fig. 18]. The in- 
accuracy of some Roman measurements is strange when 
we consider the exactness of these Pompeiian instruments. 
Thus 34 is given as the ratio of the circumference of the 
circle to the diameter by Vi- 
truvius, a competent architect 
who must often have had occasion 
to examine the drums of columns. 
A better result might have been 
expected from any schoolboy 
provided with a compass and Fic, 18.—Mathematical instruments. 

From Pompeii, after Oberbeck. 
tape measure. 

An interesting description of the method of estimation 
of the distance from the observer of an inaccessible point 
on the same level as himself, e.g. the opposite bank of a 
river, has come down to us. A line is traced along the near 
bank, and is measured off by rolling along it a hodometer, 
an instrument consisting of a wheel the length of the cir- 
cumference of which is known and whose revolutions can 
be counted. Vitruvius has preserved for us a description 
of this apparatus which is in effect a ‘ taxicab ’ [Fig. 19]. 
From each end of this measured line a sight is taken by means 
of the dioptra—the Roman form of which was inferior to 
that described by Hero of Alexandria (c. Ist cent. A.D.). 
The angles and the base being thus available a triangle 
congruent to that formed by joining the point on the far 
bank to the extremities of the measured line, is constructed 


36 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


on the near bank. The vertical height of this triangle 
can now be measured by the hodometer and this will give 
the distance of the point from the observer, or the breadth 
of the river. We may here note that the work of Vitruvius 


Fic. 19.—‘ Taxicab’ or hodometer as described by Vitruvius. The wheel a 
runs along the ground. It has, eccentrically attached to its axle, a peg which fits into 
the cogs of wheels. At every rotation of wheel a the wheel 8 therefore turns one peg. 
The rotation of B is transmitted to a vertical shaft and the rotation of this shaft is 
transmitted and reduced by passage through the series of joints c, D, , and F. Finally 
the rotation at F is transmitted to a vertical shaft which is fastened to the disk G. This 
disk G is perforated with holes. As disk G rotates these holes come in turn opposite 
to the open upper end of the tube u j which leads into the reservoir x. Pebbles are 
placed on each of the holes in G and the machine is so geared that for every mile 
traversed one falls into the reservoir xk. The distance traversed may be checked by 
counting these pebbles. Dials may be fitted to the horizontal shafts as at L and M. 


was first printed in 1486 at Rome and was early circulating 
in an Italian translation. It was perhaps from such a 
version that Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) obtained hints 
which enabled him to design his ‘ taxicab.’ 

Mechanical knowledge among the Romans was very 


an ee ee ee ee 


ey 


é 


ee a Ce ioe ee 


ai BEN Sr 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 37 


evident in certain departments ; it had always a practical 
direction and was not cultivated for its own sake. Among 
the inventions that the Romans may have made indepen- 
dently is the steelyard. This instrument is a device of 
considerable antiquity among them, and may be traced 
back at least as far as the third century B.c. Its use was 
widely understood and many speci- 
mens have been recovered [Fig. 20]. 
The principle of the pulley, too, 
was well known. Thus on one of “ } 
the monuments we can follow the | 
mechanism ofacrane. It is worked 
by a treadmill and raises blocks of 
stone by acting through a whole system of 
pulleys [Fig. 21]. 

The inadequate ‘theoretical basis of the 
physical conceptions of Latin writers is shown 
in various directions. ‘Thus Pliny recounts a 
fable of the Remora, a fish of the Mediterranean 
which has a sucker on its head. ‘ This tiny 
fish can restrain all the forces of the ocean. 
Winds may rage and storms may roar, yet the 
fish restrains their might and fury, and causes 
ships to stand still . . . by simply adhering to 
them.’ Centuries before, Archimedes (287-212 
B.c.) had demanded ‘a fixed place on 
which to stand that he might move the F fe aon sR OATES 
world” The full understanding of the jn the British Museum. 
works of Archimedes failed for the next 
millennium and a half. Yet his simpler practical devices, 
such as the water screw, were familiar enough to the 
Romans. | 

Seneca is superior, scientifically, to Pliny. ‘This in itself 
is no great distinction, but there are several passages in 
the Quaestiones naturales which suggest that Seneca did 
occasionally take the trouble to verify some of the state- 
ments that he makes. He has a clear idea too of the value 


38 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


of astronomical observations. Thus he tells us that ‘ it is 
essential to have a record of all former appearances of 
comets. These bodies appear seldom and therefore we 


do not yet know ... if they follow periodic laws and - 


whether some definite cause is responsible for their reap- 
pearance at the appointed day. Such a development of 
astronomy is but recent.’ In spite of this statement of 
Seneca there is a passage in the Meteorologica of Aristotle 
which seems to ascribe the knowledge of the periodic 
return of comets to the Pythagoreans and to Hippocrates 
of Chios (c. 425 B.C.), five hundred years before the days 
of Seneca. 

Seneca’s statement concerning the magnifying powers 
of glass globes is peculiarly noteworthy. Fallacious attempts 
have been made to show that the ancients knew of the effect 
of refraction of light at curved surfaces. That they knew 
of the burning-glass is clear from references in Pliny and 
elsewhere, and many glass or crystal spheres, probably 
used as fire-makers, have been recovered from Roman 


sites. These burning glasses do not, however, seem to have ~ 


been used for magnifying purposes, and Seneca has be- 
queathed to us one of the very few passages in ancient 
writings that suggest that this power of transparent spheres 
had even been noticed. He records that ‘ letters however 
small and dim appear large and clear when viewed through 
a glass globe filled with water.’ It has been claimed that 
globes of this type were used by the gem cutters of antiquity, 
but such suggestions are unsupported by evidence. The 
oft-repeated statement that Nero used a cut emerald as a 
lens to aid his defective vision has arisen from a mis- 
translation of a passage in Pliny. | 


Applied mathematics underwent some development at 
the end of the Republican period. Julius Caesar himself 


was an astronomical author and Pliny used a book of his as 
a source. Caesar had planned two undertakings of great 


scientific import. He wished to improve the Roman 


~“ 


he 


Bs ao a shaate wages 
en i eas ree) ier si 


— 
. 


> pak 
a * 


ms Se ae eee > a 
AO Pn Oe oe Me eet ee, 


Fic. 21.—CRANE 
Worked with human labour by treadmill. 


Lateran Museum, See page 27. 


38] 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 39 


calendar which had fallen into great confusion, and to 
organize a general survey of the Empire. Both of these 
projects were ultimately realized. 

The early history of the Roman calendar is obscure. 
We learn from Censorinus (fl. a.D. 238) and Macrobius 
(fl. A.D. 400) that the Roman year consisted at first of ten 
months and 304 days. Livy (59 B.c.-A.D. 17) and Plutarch 
(A.D. 46-120) give contradictory accounts of the reforms of 
Numa, who issaid to have introduced ayear of twelve months. 
It is clear that at an early date there emerged a lunar year 
of 355 days which is almost exactly twelve lunations. Of this 
calendar Martius (the month of Mars) was the first month, 
Aprilis (probably for aperilis from aperire, ‘to open ’), Maius 
(perhaps related to major), and Junius (which may be related 
to junior and juvenis) were named in connexion with the 
opening, growth, and ripening of vegetation. The following 
six months, Quinctilis, Sextilis, September, October, Novem- 
ber, and December, were given merely the numerical names 
which most of them still bear. Januarius was perhaps 
named from the god Janus, and Februarius, the last month, 
was the season of ritual purification (februare, ‘ to purify’ 
or ‘expiate’). To obtain some relation of this lunar 
reckoning to the solar year a cycle of four years had been 
invented of which the first year contained 355 days, the 
second 377, the third 355, and the fourth 378. The 
cycle thus covered 1,465 days and the average year was of 
1465 — 366} days. It is obvious that so variable a year was 
useless for agricultural purposes. The farmer had thus 
still to rely on the rising and setting of certain constellations, 
such as Arcturus and the Pleiades, for timing his operations. 
The year was variously modified at different periods, but 
until the reforms of Julius Caesar no adequate correspon- 
dence to solar events was attained. 

In place of this system Julius Caesar, acting under the 
advice of the Alexandrian mathematician Sosigenes, sub- 
stituted a solar year of 365 days and abandoned any attempt 
to adapt the years or months to the lengths of the lunations. 


40 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


In every fourth year one day called the bis-sextus was inter- 
polated before the 24th February (i.e. before ‘ dies sextus 
ante calendas Martis’). ‘These fourth or leap years became 
known as ‘ bissextile’’ years. It is believed that this reform 
was a reproduction of the Egyptian calendar that had been 
enacted in 238 B.c. and had been perhaps designed at a 
yet earlier date by the Greek astronomer Eudoxus (fi. ¢. 
350B.c.). In 44B.c., the second year of the Julian Calendar, 
one of the months was named Judius in honour of its founder. 
In 8 B.c. another month was called Augustus after his 
successor. 


§ 6. Geography 


Geography in the limited sense as distinct from cosmo- 
graphy was a topic that might be expected to appeal to the 
practical and imperialistically minded Roman. We learn 
of the existence of maps from a variety of Latin authors— 
Cicero, Pliny, Seneca, Suetonius, and Vitruvius. From 
Varro we gain a hint of the early religious associations of 
land-surveying, for he tells us that a map of Italy engraved 
on marble had a place in the temple of Tellus. 

The survey of the Empire planned by Caesar may have 
been suggested, like his calendarial reform, by ideas culled 
- from Alexandria. The division of the provinces, the de- 
mands of trade, the distribution of the fleet, all made the 
need of this work evident. In the event the execution 
of the scheme fell to Augustus. The survey was super- 
intended by his son-in-law M. Vipsanius Agrippa (died 
12 B.C.), and was finally carried through in 20 B.c. after 
nearly 30 years’ work. Agrippa wrote a commentary 
illustrating this map, quotations from which have survived 
in the writings of Ammianus Marcellinus (c. A.D. 325-92) 
and Pliny. It was fairly accurate for the provinces of Italy, 
Greece, and Egypt, whereas other countries were only 
roughly surveyed. 

The survey was rendered possible by the fact that the 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 4I 


Empire was well furnished with roads marked out with 
milestones. There was a regular service of skilled 
agrimensores or surveyors whose work, incorporated in 
the reports of provincial governors and generals, would be 
available at head-quarters. From this mass of material a 
huge map was prepared which was exhibited in a building 
erected for the purpose. This was the prototype of later 
strategical maps, a copy of one of which has survived to this 
day and is known as the Peutinger table after the sixteenth- 
century scholar who first published it. It was originally 
drawn in the year A.D. 366, but the copy we have, which is 
now at Vienna, was prepared in 1265. On it are shown the 
routes for armies throughout the Empire. These routes 
are indicated by lines which are notched at intervals that 
correspond to a day’s journey. The whole map is greatly 
distorted by being enormously prolonged in the east-west 
direction [Fig. 22 and Fig. 23]. It is evident that, in its 
construction, cartographical accuracy was less considered 
than the purely practical aim of a convenient view of the 
itineraries. It may thus be compared to the distorted 
maps issued by some of our railway companies. The unit 
is usually a Roman mile (a thousand steps = mille passuum = 
1,651 yards). Distances are sometimes indicated by figures. 

Some idea of the manner in which the main routes of 
the Empire were surveyed and marked out may be gained 
from certain monuments, notably the inscribed marble 
pillars of Autun (Augustodunum). The monument gives— 
or gave, for most of it is now lost—the distances of a number 
of places on the road from Autun to Rome such as Autessio- 
durum (Auxerre), Bononia (Bologna), and Mutina (Modena). 
Somewhat similar inscriptions—sometimes of the nature 
of simple milestones—have been found at Tongres in Bel- 
gium, in Luxembourg, at Valencia, near the Roman wall 
in Northumberland, and in other places. Very remarkable 
are four silver bowls from Vicarello which give the route 
between Gades (Cadiz) and Rome. Of especial interest 
to English readers is a round bronze dish found in 1725 


"rb oded pur €z “3p 209 


‘uredg pu ures 7 
= I gq jo sired puv unis 
a, pe Lg ey CPO I ak aa at 
tis | I soZuTNIg JO UOT} 
-, 73 ae ' . Ss aa 


Sa 
CNY RE aa PSS ST 
Ca be 


seedy *92 gfrarove PD seccosmrorse 


, Cry . 
a Fy 
| —— 
aL t- wep 
: J os a 
RPE : pore’, = y 
. 
a 3 " as. : “ 
5 s i ‘ 
aed tale ' sy 
x a 


-t 
¥ % bd ideas 
Xe "= 


42 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 43 


at Rudge Coppice in Wiltshire. Around its edge are written 
in second-century script the names of a number of places 
in the northern part of the country. 


iL ugdin. Batavorum 


=— 
ALAA 


SS 
(rz 


fsea Dumnonioru 
O 2 hr = 
Gessoriacum Ws 72 


Nemetacum® 


6 of Samard 
Coriallum otge = fst 
= aN NY Novigdunum 


va 
i is Gesocr' Regine ap I : YI 
‘ g D bork 
~. p QCondate \rabmatunum 
5 oO 
z ye Sulio mag ais O 
) NO 8 \ 
wu aS BITURIOES te 
- am 
Au 
re ‘S ZA) Js Pretoria 
Augustoritum « Mi 
fi 9 U — yas 
- WAug. 
Yaurtnofam 


SS 
is St _F orum Juli 


ee unda English Miles 
o 50 100 


YA. =~ Main Roads 
cae 8arcino —~ Minor" 
arraco 


Fic. 23.—Roman Gaul, showing the area covered by the section of the 
Peutinger map on the opposite page and exhibiting the Roman roads included 
in that section. 


In addition to inscribed stones and vessels and besides 
maps or itineraria picta such as the Peutinger table, we have 
true route-books or ttineraria adnotata. One of these, the 
Itinerarium Antonini, a remarkably complete register of 


we Ea ce 
j 7 . 
> 


44 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


the roads of the whole Empire, was probably put together 
in its present form about A.D. 300, though its original goes 
back at least to the beginning of the third century. Both 
principal and cross roads are indicated by lists of the 
towns and stations upon them, the distance from place to 
place being given in Roman miles. Of more limited scope 
are the pilgrim-books such as the Jtimerartum Burdigalense 
of 333 from Bordeaux to Jerusalem and back to Milan and 
the journey-book to Palestine of the lady-pilgrim called 
Silvia of Aquitania of about 380. Rutilius Namatianus of 
Toulouse wrote in 417 a versified Itinerarium de reditu suo 
which gave an account of a journey from Rome to Gaul. 
He was a pagan who fiercely attacked the monks—men who 
dread the evils without being able to support the blessings 
of the human condition. His work naturally delighted the 
heart of Gibbon, and is of interest as still exhibiting the 
faith that Rome is immortal. ‘The anonymous Geographus 
Ravennas, though put together as late as the end of the 
seventh century, contains, in a corrupt form, much valuable 
information concerning Roman roads and towns. The 
Ravenna geographer seems to have used sources employed 
by Ptolemy. | 


To general geography and cosmography as distinct from 
the limited subject of military and imperial surveys the 
Romans paid less attention. ‘The only Latin writer of any 
importance who deals with the subject is Pomponius Mela. 
He was a Spaniard, and his date may be gleaned from his 
reference to Britain as about to be more fully explored by 
an expedition then in progress. ‘This must refer to the visit 
of the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 43. 

Pomponius Mela clearly meant his work to be an easy 
account of his subject. Beginning with a general descrip- 
tion of the earth he avoids mathematical topics and does 
not give distances or measurements. ‘The world is a sphere, 
and the land upon it is surrounded on all sides by sea 
[Fig. 24]. Five zones may be distinguished on the earth’s 


* F 
ane ’ o a 
oe ey aes ee eee, a eee en ee | 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 45 


surface ; that in the middle is burnt up by heat and is as 
uninhabitable as are the two extreme zones by reason of 
cold. Between the torrid and frigid zones lie the two 
habitable temperate zones. In one of these we live, while 


Sartor ds Secgraphies! Becab' 


E oO 
a 


ge) Cae, 


From E. H. Bunbury, Héstory of 


ie % i) be 
g ae Se: 
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é Z BES he ae : o Was 
~ i i My 1 3% 
; ‘ | am = wes 
eg is : . } 3.2 
sip uy —_ if ae ad & i & | 3 
” A i a “ : oi) F 7 CAM =A | ol A, q 
¥) hg Bile PM |: ag i) a 4 g 3 
ed } aes yy. a Gu ar 
A e ay eed < 4 ifs x 4 ry fi) 4 1 ; f “ | 2 2 
yi i 4 = < ly aN an = | ne A) 8 he 
fila 4 rs | a A 
ls 4 al | ) 2 4 a ~ i i = fea 
a Disc ee ie 
aie 3 = 7 . iy es 
: SE ls A i ; ,] 6 4 1 2 & 
: 4 By: V3 « A - f “4 P 
HE vi fe eikS | : , | 348 
an as a ( ie diy | Zs 
14 ae, We) 3 Se ea er x - go 3“ 

WP WAM 8 men Ou 

o Nicer i a ay ; 3 

a He i nh : A 

= S ae Oo ee eae Pk ” Paba df g 

fy 


in the other dwell the Antichthones. Our own hemisphere 

is completely surrounded by ocean, from which it receives 
four seas or gulfs, one at the north, the Caspian, two in 
the south, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and the fourth 
to the west, the Mediterranean. The scheme as a whole 


46 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


is taken from Eratosthenes (275-c. 194 B.C.), whose geo- 
graphical ideas governed the world until the time of Ptolemy 
(fil. A.D. 150), and it is clear that Pomponius Mela is here 
borrowing mainly from Greek sources. 

Mela next passes to a general description of the three 
continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is noteworthy that 
he takes the river Tanais (the Don), lake Maeotis (the Sea 
of Azov), and the Euxine Sea (Pontus Euxinus, the Black 
Sea) as the frontiers between Europe and Asia, while it is 
the Nile that divides Asia from Africa. Asia is as large as 
Europe and Africa together. ‘These ideas were passed on 
to the earlier Middle Ages and are expressed in the first 
European world-map that has survived, which is in a 
seventh-century codex of Isidore (560-636) at St. Gall. 
Between the three continents is the Mediterranean, which 
Mela speaks of as ‘ our sea.’ Mela proceeds to a detailed 
description of the different countries which is sufficiently 
detailed for the lands and islands of the Mediterranean, 
but becomes more vague as he passes from that area. He 
is singularly hazy as regards central Europe, which is 
remarkable when one considers the importance of the 
military operations in progress in that area. His account 
of Britain may serve as a sample of his descriptions of 
countries beyond his own immediate area. 

‘ Britain, according to present knowledge, extends in the 
directions North and East. It offers a wide angle opposite 
the mouths of the Rhine. One arm of this angle looks 
towards Gaul, the other towards Germany. The two 
sides abut obliquely on a long straight line which terminates 
them behind and gives the land a triangular form like that 
of Sicily. Britain is flat, large, and fertile, but her produce 
is more suitable for cattle than men. She has forests, 


lakes, and considerable rivers which flow with alternating ~ 


motion into the sea and towards their sources (according 
to the alternate movements of the tide); some of them 
produce pearls and precious stones. The inhabitants . . 

are all savage and rich only in flocks. They paint the 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 47 


body either by way of ornament or from some other motive. 
They make pretexts of war and often attack each other, 
impelled solely by the ambition to command and to extend 
their borders. Armed like the Gauls, they fight not only 
on foot and on horseback but also in chariots which they 
call covint and which have scythes attached to their axles. 

' Beyond Britain is Ireland, stretching nearly as far and 
of an oblong form. Its climate is unfavourable for 
ripening cereals, but it abounds in herbs of pleasant appear- 
ance and so sweet that the flocks fill themselves to repletion 
in a short part of the day, so that if not prevented from 
eating they would burst with fatness. The natives are 
rude and more ignorant of the virtues and devoid of piety 
than any other people.’ 

The haziness of the geographical ideas even of a very 
intelligent Roman of Imperial times may be gathered from 
the pages of Tacitus (c. A.D. 55-120). He tells how, 
under Agricola, the Roman fleet rounded Britain and 
proved it to be an island, discovering at the same time the 
Orcades (Orkney Islands) and coming in sight of Thule, 
by which the Shetlands are perhaps meant. Yet Tacitus, 
like Caesar and the elder Pliny, believes that Spain lies to the 
west of Britain [Fig. 25]. He describes the Pyrenees as 
running north and south. He goes on to explain the 
phenomenon of the midnight sun—which he brings as far 
south as the North of Scotland—by telling us that ‘ the 
flat extremities of the earth, casting a low shadow, do not 
throw the darkness up high, and the night does not reach to 
the sky and stars.’ This statement implies the view that 
the earth is a disk with flattened edges. 


The final geographical synthesis of antiquity was made by 
Claudius Ptolemaeus, who worked and observed at Alexan- 
dria during the reigns of Hadrian (117-38) and Antoninus 
Pius (138-161), whom he survived. Ptolemy, who was no 
less important as a geographer than as an astronomer, wrote 
in Greek but worked on itineraries of Roman officials and 


48 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


merchants. Thus he may be said to preserve for us a 
summary of Roman knowledge of the earth’s surface, 
presented, however, in a way in which no Latin writer was 
capable. Ptolemy is generally thought to have used the 
map prepared by M. Vipsanius Agrippa which was placed 
in the porch of Pollux at Rome. 

Ptolemy developed his own manner of representing the 
curved surface of the earth on 
aplane surface. In his scheme 
of projection the parallels of 
latitude are arcs of concentric 
circles, the centres of which 
are at the North Pole. Chief 


Equator and circles passing 
respectively through ‘Thule, 
through Rhodes, and through 
Meroe. The meridians of 
longitude are represented by 
straight lines which converge 
to the Pole. He delineates in 
this manner the whole of the 
then known world, and the 
limits that he sets give a clear 


HISPANIA , 


Fic. 25.—Map of Western Europe eee Srl od ak 
reconstructed from the descriptions of Cal vision in impefia oman 


Tacitus. From Tacitus, vol. i, trans- times. The boundaries of 
ted by W. Peenon, by ermision Prolemy’s world are: on the 

north, the Ocean which sur- 
rounds the British Isles, the northern parts of Europe, 
and the unknown land in the northern region of Asia ; 
on the south, the unknown land which encloses the Indian 
Sea, and the unknown land to the south of Libya and 
Aethiopia; on the east, the unknown land which adjoins 
the eastern nations of Asia, the Sinae (Chinese) and the 
people of Serica, the silk-producing land; on the west, 
the great Western Ocean and unknown parts of Libya. 


among the parallels are the 


idea of the range of geographi- 


gr a eG 
Po. es pe Me ree 


pre. 


¥en Ee 


> 
raw 
op, 


ee 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 49 


The portion of the earth thus surveyed covers in length 
a hemisphere and in breadth between 63° north latitude 
and 16,°,° south latitude. 

The Tewypadixy “Sorynois, Geographical Outline, of 
Ptolemy is the only complete scientific ancient geography 
that we have. As originally written it was furnished with 
maps. ‘These have long since disappeared, but as Ptolemy 
gives the latitude and longitude of the places that he men- 


HY PERBOREAN 


HYPERBOREAN or DUECALEDONIAN 
c of the Novantag 


OCEAN 


Fic, 26.—Map of British Isles reconstructed by plotting out the fixed 
points given by Ptolemy and joining them together by straight lines, 


tions his charts can be reconstructed. A peculiar interest 


attaches to the map of Britain which can be thus put together 
[Fig. 26]. It would seem that Scotland was bent eastward 
with its axis at a right angle to that of England. This is 
an unusual degree of error for Ptolemy. It has therefore 
been suggested that he was here working not on records 
brought back by travellers, but on actual maps of the 
island, and that he made the mistake of fitting the map of 
Scotland on to that of England along the wrong side. 


4 


5° FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Ptolemy’s Geographical Outline was not available in Latin 
until a translation was made by the Italian Giacomo Angelo, 
who was Chancellor of the University of Montpellier early 
in the fifteenth century. That translation was printed at 
Bologna, perhaps as early as 1472, and deeply influenced 
Renaissance geographical ideas. Many editions of it ap- 
peared adorned with reconstructed charts in the early years 
of printing. It was to errors in the work of Ptolemy that 
Columbus owed his belief in the practicability of a western 
passage to the Indies. 


§ 7. Astronomy and Cosmology 


The Romans did not deal with astronomical matters until 
fairly late and then mostly for practical purposes. They 
never developed a mathematical astronomy such as that 
which formed the basis of Greek cosmological speculations. 
A bronze plaque has, however, been found at Salzburg 
which is engraved with the names and figures of constella- 
‘tions. Pliny tells us that in his time there were 1,600 named. 
stars. These bodies, he considered, were composed of fire 
and filled with air. 

Popular astronomy and geography are represented in 
Latin by certain poetical works bearing the name of Avienus 
(c. A.D. 380). The geographical poems of Avienus are 
adapted from Greek works by Dionysius Periegetes 
(c. A.D.100), which were rendered again into Latin by Priscian 
in the sixth century. For his astronomical works Avienus 
draws upon Greek treatises of Aratus of Soli (271-213 B.C.). 
To one of these known as the Aratea Phaenomena quite 
peculiar interest is attached. St. Jerome tells us that when, 
in the Acts, St. Paul is reported as saying ‘ In him we live, 
and move, and have our being ; as certain even of your own 
poets have said, For we are also his offspring’ (Acts xvii. 28), 
he is quoting the Aratea Phaenomena. ‘The words tov yap 
kal yévos éopev, for we are also his offspring, are in fact to be 
found in the opening invocation to Zeus in Aratus, and in 
a slightly different form in a work of the poet Cleanthes (3rd 


aS 7 
ahs eee 


‘ 

4 

7 

7 

: 
, 
2 
a 
E 
i 
¢ 
Se 
BS 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 51 


cent. B.C.) and in an expanded form in Avienus. Aratus 
was a native of Cilicia, St. Paul’s native province. Both 
Aratus and Cleanthes were claimed by the Stoics, who, 
with the Epicureans, were opposing the apostle at Athens 
(Acts xvii. 18). 

St. Jerome gives us also the approximate date of Avienus, 
for he speaks of the Phaenomena 
‘Aratt, quem Cicero in Latinum 
sermonem transtulit et Germanicus 
Caesar et nuper Avienus,’ ‘ which 
Cicero and Germanicus Caesar 
translated into the Latin tongue 
and lately also Avienus.’ These 
three versions all still exist in 
whole or in part. That of Cicero 
is found in a certain very peculiar 


early manuscript. It is written 
with the words arranged to form 
figures representing the signs of 
the constellations. The figures 
resemble those engraved on the 
Salzburg plaque. They are im- 
portant as exhibiting the passage 
of late Imperial into early medi- 
aeval book illustration. 

Though backward in astronomy 
the Romans had early developed 
a good knowledge of such ele- 
mentary developments as_ the 
sundial, which was known to them 


Fic. 27.—Sundial found in the 
Stabian Baths at Pompeii in 1854. 
On the base are carved three lines 
in the Oscan script and language 
written from right to left, which’ 
may be read as follows :— 

MR ATINIfs MR  KVAISSTUR 
EITIUVAD | MULTASIKAD KUMBEN- 
NIEIS TANG(INUD) | AAMAN (A)FFED 

The Latin equivalent of this 
would probably be : 

MARAS ATINIUS MARAS QUAE- 
STOR PECUNIA | MULTATITIA CON- 
VENTUS DECRETO | AEDIFICAVIT, 
and it may be translated : 

‘Maras son of Maras of the 
gens Atinia, the Quaestor, built 
(this) by order of the Corporation 
out of fine-money.’ 


in the third century B.c. and the results of which were early 
applied to calendarial reckoning. Several sundials have been 
recovered from Pompeii, one bearing an inscription in the 
old Oscan dialect [Fig. 27]. Full directions for the con- 
struction of sundials are given by Vitruvius, who tells of a 
number of different forms in use in his time. These he 
Says were invented by Berosus the Chaldaean (ff. 250 B.c.) 


52 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


and by various Greeks of whom Aristarchus of Samos 
(c. 220-143 B.C.) and Eudoxus (ff. c. 350 B.c.) are the best 
known. ‘The construction of these various forms implies 
command of considerable mechanical skill and some 
efficiency in the making and recording of elementary 
astronomical observations. Sundials suitable for use by 
travellers have been recovered from several sites [Fig. 28]. 
Vitruvius describes another form of time-measurer. It 
is a water clock working on an extremely simple and effec- 


| 

Fic. 28.—Portable sundial found at Cret-Chatelard in the Department of the Loire. 
The winter solstice (bruma) is given as the eighth day before the Kalends of January, 
i.e. December 23, and the summer solstice (so/stitium) as the eighth day before the 
Kalends of July, i.e. June 22. The dates now given are one day earlier. The ground 
plan of the sundial is shown at 1, the complete sundial in perspective at 2,-and in 
elevation at 3. . 


tive principle [Fig. 29]. He says he borrowed the idea 
from Ctesibius (c. 120 B.C.),an ingenius barber of Alexandria. 

The difference in the length of day in different latitudes 
was well known to the Romans. From the fact that the 
longest day in Alexandria was 14 hours, in Italy 15, and in 
Britain 17 hours, Pliny deduces that lands close to the pole 


must have a 24-hours day around the summer solstice, 


and a 24-hours night in winter. 


Many passages in Pliny reflect a contest concerning 
the form of the earth, reminding us of the similar 


: ¢ adie me . 
\ ’ Z ale ures : 
hd ce : Se ee 
Oe eee ee ee, A 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 53 


dispute of the seventeenth century that turned around the 
name of Copernicus and the views of Galileo. Pliny 
opens his work with a description of the general 
structure of the universe. With the theory of the spherical 
form of the earth had come the view that man was much 
more widely distributed 
than had been thought. 
The general character 
of ancient mathematical 
geography had _ been 
fixed by Eratosthenes, 
who presided over the 
school of Alexandria for 
more than forty years, 
till about 194 B.c. Geo- 
graphical theory had 
altered by little since 
his time, but, with the 
dissemination of his 
sphericist view of the 
earth, the belief in the 
existence of antipodean 


races became not un- ; 
1 d d Fig. 29.—Water clock described by Vitruvius. 
usual among educate From the tank a water drips at a uniform rate 


Romans. through the small pipe B into the reservoir c in 


‘ : which is*the float p. From the upper surface 
: Science and the of D rises the shaft 2, the teeth of which, by 
opinion of the mob, their movement as the shaft rises, rotate the 


saysPliny,‘arein direct corte. To tis co-whe braced 
Opposition. Accor ding the dial, indicates the hour. 

to the former the whole 

sphere of the earth is inhabited by men whose feet point 
towards each other while all have the heavens above their 
heads. But the mob ask how men on the antipodes do not 
fall off ; as though that did not present the opposite query 
why they should not wonder at our not falling off. Usually, 
however, the crowd objects if one urges that water also 
tends to be spherical. Yet nothing is more obvious, since 


54 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


hanging drops always form little spheres.’ Among his 
proofs of the curved surface of the earth is the gradual 
appearance of ships, mast first, then hull, as they approach 
the shore. 

The teaching of the spherical form of the earth thus 
became the common belief of the educated during Imperial 
times. There were also individuals by whom the helio- 
centric teaching, of which the germ was among the Greeks, 
was not entirely ignored. Copernicus fifteen hundred 
years later sought to link his teaching to antiquity and 
quoted Cicero in support of his views. 


To the moon and fixed stars the Romans had already in 
Pliny’s time began to attribute an influence on human 
affairs. ‘ Who does not know,’ he asks, ‘ that when Sirius 
rises it exercises influence on the widest stretch of earth ? ’ 
The influence of the dog-star is an idea that may be traced 
back in Greek literature at least as far as Hesiod (8th century 
B.c.) and has given us our modern superstition of the * dog 
days.’ It was recognized that the moon had influence on 
tides and it was thought that influencing the outer world, 
the macrocosm, it had influence also on the body of man, 
the microcosm. With the waxing of the moon it was 
believed that the muscles became bigger and blood increased. 
This theory gave rise to the practice of periodical blood- 
letting. 3 

The supposed influence of the heavenly bodies on the 


earth and on the life of man is a topic that leads on to — 


judicial astrology. A knowledge of that subject became 
under the Empire a professional possession illegal and 
prohibited but often tolerated and resorted to even by 
emperors. Astrology was beginning to spread in Rome 
in the first century of the Christian era. ‘° There are 
those,’ Pliny tells us, ‘ who assign [all human events] to 
the influence of the stars, and to the laws of their nativity. 
They suppose that God, once for all, issues his decrees 
and never after interferes. This opinion begins to gain 


: i. OP = as | 


4 

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F 
af 
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— 
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oa 
re 

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4 
5 
‘sa 
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SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 55 


ground and both the learned and the vulgar are falling in 
with it.’ The art was of foreign origin. The credit of 
its invention is always ascribed to the ‘ Chaldaeans.’ 
Orientals were certainly practising astrology in Rome from 
an early date, but the main channel of transmission was 
Greek. ‘ As for the branch of astronomy which concerns 
the influences of the twelve signs of the zodiac, the five 
planets and the sun and moon on man’s life,’ says Vitruvius, 
‘we must leave it to the calculations of the Chaldaeans to 
whom belongs the art of casting nativities, which enables 
them to declare the past and future.’ 

It is largely against these Chaldaeans that Cicero directs 
his dialogue On divination. He misunderstands the basis 
of astrology and marshals ancient and fallacious arguments 
against it. Yet even Cicero accepted some astrological 
doctrine, and in his Dream of Scipio he spoke of the planet 
Jupiter as helpful and Mars as harmful. To the early Chris- 
tian writers astrology was even more abhorrent, for it 
seemed to them to be the negation of that doctrine of free- 
will that was so dear to them. ‘Tertullian (c. 155-c. 222), 
Lactantius (c. 260-c. 340), and Augustine (354-430) all 
inveigh against it. With the spread of Christianity in the 
West and the disappearance of the Stoic philosophy, astro- 
logy passed into the background to return with the Arabian 
revival and the rise of the Universities. 

A large literature arose on the subject, of which we have 
remains in the works of Manilius (1st century a.D.), Cen- 
sorius (3rd century a.D.), and Firmicus Maternus (4th 
century A.D.). Nevertheless, astrology seems on the whole 
to have been rather less cultivated in Rome itself than the 
general state of society and the wide spread of the Stoic 
philosophy might perhaps suggest. Lovers sought to learn 
of astrologers a lucky day for a wedding, travellers inquired 
what was the best day for starting on a journey, and builders 
asked the correct date for laying a foundation stone. All 
these may easily be paralleled by instances among the 
empty-headed in our own time and country. But Galen 


56 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


(A.D. 130-200), who practised among the well-to-do and 
educated, assures us that they only bothered about astrology 
for forecasting legacies—and again a parallel might be drawn. 
The new astrology introduced by Greeks and ‘ Chaldaeans ’ 
tended, however, to replace the native magical system. 
The process can be observed in action in the work of 
Censorinus, De die natali. , 

But astrology must not be considered only as a super- 
stition and an occupation for empty heads and idle hands. 
The astrological system of antiquity was, after all, only a 
formal statement of the beliefs concerning the nature and 
working of our mundane sphere which the ideas of a 
scientific astronomy and cosmology had fostered. Faith in 
it was almost part of the Stoic creed. In the presentment 
of the world which science thus made, there was no room for 
those anthropomorphic gods, the belief in whom was still 
fostered by the priests and held by the multitude. The 
spread of science had led at last to a complete breach between 
the official faith and the opinions of the educated classes. 
The idea of ‘ universal solidarity,’ of the interdependence 
on one another of all parts of the universe, produced a 
new form of religion. The world itself must be divine. 
‘ Deity,’ says Pliny, ‘ only means nature.’ From such a 
view to the monotheism of Virgil, in which the world as a 
whole is regarded as the artistic product of an external god, 
is perhaps no great step. 

On the whole, however, science, linked with Stoicism, 
failed to take that step, and assumed among later Latin - 
writers a fatalistic and pessimistic mood. ‘ God, if God there 
be, was outside the world and could not be expected to 
care for it,’ says Pliny. The idea of immortality seems to 
him but the ‘ childish babble ’ of those who are possessed — 
by the fear of death, as Lucretius had once maintained. After 
death, so Pliny would have us believe, man is as he was 
before he was born—and. this he tells us as he plunges 
into his magic-ridden pages ! 

Once and once only in these Latin scientific writings have 


SCIENCE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 57 


we a clear note of real hope. It is significant that that note 
is sounded in connexion with a statement of a belief in the 
progress of knowledge, an echo of the Greek thought of the 
fifth and fourth centuries B.c. It is significant too that the 
note is sounded by one who approached, nearer perhaps 
than any other pagan Latin philosopher, to the idea of the 
divine immanence. In his Quaestiones naturales Seneca 
wrote : 


There are many things akin to highest deity that are still obscure. 
Some may be too subtle for our powers of comprehension, others imper- 
ceptible to us because such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holiest 
part of its sanctuary, forbidding access to any power save that of the 
spirit. How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye! . 
How many discoveries are reserved for the ages to come when our memory 
shall be no more, for this world of ours contains matter for investigation 
for all generations . . . God has not revealed all things to man and has 
entrusted us with but a fragment of His mighty work. But He who directs 
all things, who has-established and laid the foundation of the world, who 
has clothed Himself with Creation, He is greater and better than that 
which He has wrought. Hidden from our eyes, He can only be reached 
by the spirit . . . On entering a temple we assume all signs of reverence. 
How much more reverent then should we be before the heavenly bodies, 
the stars, the very nature of God ! 


But the science of antiquity as exhibited elsewhere in Latin 
writings contains very little of this belief in man’s destiny, 
this hope for human knowledge. The world in which 
the Imperial Roman lived was a finite world bound by the 
firmament and limited by a flaming rampart (Frontispiece). 
His fathers had thought that great space peopled by numina, 
‘ divinities,’ that needed to be propitiated. The new 
dispensation—that lex naturae of the world that had so 
many parallels with the jus gentium of the Empire—had now 
taken the place of those awesome beings. 

In the inevitableness of the action of that law Lucretius 
the Epicurean might find comfort from the unknown 
terror. Yet for the Stoic it must have remained a limited, 
fixed, rigid, and cruel law. His vision, we must remember, 
was very different from that given by the spacious claim 


58 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


of modern science which explores into ever wider and 
wider regions of space and time and thought. It was an 
iron, nerveless, tyrannical universe which science had raised 
and in which the Roman thinker must have felt himself 
fettered, imprisoned, crushed. The Roman had forsaken 
his early gods, that crowd of strangely vague yet personal 
beings whose ceremonial propitiation in every event and 
circumstance had filled his fathers’ lives. He had had before 
him an alternative of the oriental cults whose gods were 
but mad magicians—a religion unworthy of a philosopher— 
and the new religion of science whose god, he now saw, 
worked by a mechanical rule. He had abandoned the 
faith of his fathers and had flung himself into the arms of 
what he believed to be a lovelier god, and lo! he found 
himself embracing a machine! His soul recoiled and he 
fled into Christianity. Science had induced that essential 
pessimism which clouds much of the thought of later 
antiquity. It was reaction against this pessimism which 
led to the great spiritual changes in the midst of which 
antiquity went up in flames and smoke. 


PLATS Ua 


ee ee a ee 


CELESTIAL INFLUENCES ON MEN, ANIMALS, AND PLANTS 


From a MS. at Lucca of the Liber Divinorum Operum Simplicis Hominis of Hildegard, written about 1200. 
See pp. 58 and 21821. 


: 
a 


[59 


oe ee 


eh ee 


Il 
THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN OF 


SCIENCE 
§ 1. The Limits of the Middle Ages of Science . Pp. 59 
§ 2. The Dark Age. p. 65 
§ 3. The Age of Arabian Tijiltr ation po a 
§ 4. Translation from the Arabic : Pp. 275 
§ 5. Content of Mediaeval Science. The Astrolgical Clue p. 81 
§ 6. Scholasticism and Science . P p. 85 
§ 7. The Dawn of Modern Science. Roger Racer Pp. go 
§ 8. Humanism Pp. 95 
§ 9. The Science of the Reibistinch: : : : ; p. 100 
§ 10. The Great Instauration . : ' ; ; : p. 105 


§ 1. The Limits of the Middle Ages of Science 


THE Middle Ages, by general admission, present us with 
a set-back in the development of scientific ideas. Between 
the fall of the Empire and the revolution in physics carried 
through by Galileo in the seventeenth century, the concep- 
tion as to the nature of the world in which they lived that 
prevailed among educated men was not conducive to the 
first-hand study of nature. It is because these views 
were finally shattered by Galileo and his successors that 
many of the authors whose works we shall have to discuss 
may seem insignificant. Yet some of these men, who are 
now well-nigh forgotten, have had their share in determining 
the current of human thought and with it the course of 
human destiny. The test of importance that we must apply 
is not our assent to their opinions but the influence their 
works have had on the period we are considering. We must 
remember, too, that the period has the intense interest of 
presenting us with the beginning of something, the birth— 
or rather the rebirth—of the scientific idea. 


60 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


We cannot, then, pass over in silence the millennium 
that intervenes between antiquity and modernity. There 
is a continuity in the history of the human intellect. Looking 
back on the hundreds of thousands of years during which 
man has inhabited the surface of this planet, we cannot 
fail to be struck by the fact that only during the last few 
thousand years have civilizations appeared. We must, 
therefore, suppose that these civilizations developed with 
some sort of dependence on each other, that, in fact, they 
are versions of one movement in the development of 
humanity. To understand our own version of civilization 
we must trace it back to its origin, and this we can do only 
through the Middle Ages. It is beside the point to urge 
that the Middle Ages contributed little to the actual sum of 
knowledge of the external world. What we want to know 
is why they contributed so little, and how, contributing so 
little, they yet succeeded in passing on to our time the basic 
ideas from which science has grown. 

These Middle Ages, after all, were not a thousand years 
of cataclysm. They represent doubtless a deterioration of 
the human mind, but the nature and causes of that deteriora- 
tion are themselves the subject of intense scientific interest. 
The Middle Ages can no more be disregarded in con- 
sidering the general course of science than can a degenerate 
or parasitic series of plants or animals be passed over when 
considering the larger group to which they belong and from 
which they have sprung. The very degeneracy of such a 
series has an interest of its own, and may, by helping us to 
exclude accidental elements, enable us to detect essential 
traits which we might otherwise overlook. 


We begin our task with some attempt to delimit 
the period with which we are concerned. Without 
attempting to define science, we may describe it as the 
process of making knowledge. Being a process it must also 
involve the idea of progress or at least of movement. The 
world of science is a dynamic world with its own stores of : 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 61 


ever-acting energy. The world of the mediaeval thinker, 
on the other hand, was a static one, a world in which such 
forces as were acting were impressed from without. When 
and how was this static element introduced ? 

We may first consider the terminus a quo of the mediaeval 
attitude toward the external world. The Middle Ages 
begin, for science, at that period when the ancients ceased 
to make knowledge. Now, ancient science can be traced 
clearly as an active process up to the end of the second 
century of the Christian era. Galen, one of the very 
greatest and most creative biologists of all time, died A.D. 200. 
Ptolemy, one of the greatest of the cosmographers, was his 
older contemporary (p. 47). After Galen and Ptolemy, 
Greek science flags and scientific inspiration dwindles. 

Mathematics holds out the longest, but with the mathe- 
matician Theon of Alexandria, who died about 400, we 
part altogether with the impulse of the science of antiquity. 
Stoicism and Neoplatonism too, the chief systems of thought 
of the late Empire, are dying and are giving place to that 
great philosophical and religious movement, the repercus- 
sion of which is felt right through the Middle Ages and down 
to our owntime. The standpoint of its great protagonists, 
Tertullian (155-222), Lactantius (260-340), and, above all, 
St. Jerome (340-420) and St. Augustine (354-430), is out- 
side the department with which we have here to deal, but 
it was assuredly not conducive to the exact study and record 
of phenomena. We may fix the end of Antiquity and the 
beginning of the Middle Ages for science at the end of the 
fourth or the beginning of the fifth century [chart, p. 66]. 

The terminus ad quem of mediaeval science is, perhaps, 
less easy to determine. Mediaevalization, in our view, 
was a slow process under the action of which the human 
mind, failing to increase the stock of phenomenal knowledge, 
sank slowly into an increasing ineptitude. At a certain 
point the nadir of mental deterioration was reached and 
intellectual competence tended again upward. The time 
of lowest degradation of the human intellect varied according 


62 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


to the state of civilization in different parts of Europe. It 
was probably most general about the tenth century. After 
this may be discerned a slow ascent. Later, in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, we encounter considerable exten- 
sion of natural knowledge. There is still, however, no 
widespread acceptance of the ancient view that had been 
voiced by the philosopher Seneca (3 B.C.-A.D. 65) that 
knowledge may be indefinitely extended (p. 57). ‘That view 
appears to be an essential element in any effective doctrine 
of progress. In the scholastic period, however, there 
do at last appear a very few forward-looking minds, such 
as that of Roger Bacon (1214-94), but they are as yet very 
rare and exceptional. When we reach the fifteenth century 
and the full influence of Humanism we encounter a larger 
number of forward-looking thinkers, but they are still 
isolated. Not until the sixteenth century is there any 
effort, at once organized and conscious, to translate into 
action this new-born hope in the future. It is only in the 
early years of the seventeenth century that the hope obtains 
formal philosophical expression once more, with Francis 
Bacon (1561-1626) and René Descartes (1596-1650). By 
that time, however, not only are the Middle Ages past but 
they are so much forgotten that the reading public needs 
skilled interpreters to explain the mediaeval point of view. 

If we have to name a year for the end-point of mediaeval 
science we would select 1543. In that year appeared two 
fundamental modern works based on the experimental 
method,the De fabrica corporis humani of the Belgian Andreas 
Vesalius (1514-64) [Fig. 46] and the De revolutionibus orbium 
caelestium of the Pole Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) 
[Fig. 45]. It is true that for generations before 1543 there 
was a dawning consciousness of the inadequacy of the 
mediaeval cosmic system. ‘That discontent, however, was 
vague and ill-expressed, and of the nature rather of mental 
discomfort than of intellectual revolt. It is also true that for 
some generations after the time of Vesalius and Copernicus 
the characteristic doctrines of the science of the Middle 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 63 


Ages were almost universally taught in the schools. Such 
doctrines, too, were still diffused by literature, and are, for 
instance, displayed in the writings of Shakespeare. But 
the ideas on which the works of Vesalius and Copernicus 
had been based gain, from this time onward, an ever wider 
hearing. The year 1543 saw for the first time two pub- 
lished authoritative works that formally rejected the old 
views. These works, though produced by men who had 
steeped themselves in the old system, yet provided a new 
standpoint. For science, then, 1543 is the natural terminus 
ad quem of the Middle Ages. 

Now, since the human mind turned on its upward course 
after the tenth century, and since the process was accelerated 
during the great scholastic period of the thirteenth century 
and again at the Revival of Learning of the fifteenth century, 
it may be asked why should we not choose one or other of 
these dates as the end-point of the scientific Middle Ages ? 
The thirteenth century, the epoch of consolidation of 
Catholic philosophy, has been selected as one of exceptional 
enlightenment, and has been specially exalted by those 
who lay great emphasis on the continuing réle of the Church 
in the development of the intellectual system of our modern 
world. ‘There are, therefore, some who would place the 
division in the thirteenth rather than in the sixteenth 
century. ‘There are yet others, biased perhaps by the 
literary training of the classics, who would place the cleavage 
about the year 1400. They would make the Revival of 
Learning, and especially of Greek letters, the basis of the 
differentiation between mediaeval and modern. ‘There are 
even those who are so steeped in pessimism concerning our 
own time and have such a yearning for the ‘ Ages of Faith ’ 
that they have found much to exalt in the spiritual life of 
the earlier Middle Ages and little to appreciate in the 
rationalism of the thirteenth and later centuries. 

Yet to make the great division at any such date as 1000, 
1200, or 1400 would be an error, because, with very few 
exceptions, the point of view of the eleventh-century 


64 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


encyclopaedist, of the thirteenth-century scholastic, and 
of the fifteenth-century scholar was formally and essentially 
an effort to return to the past. It was the literature and 
language of antiquity, the antiquity of the fathers, of the 
philosophers, or of the poets, that these men sought more or 
less vainly to revive. 

In an encyclopaedia of the eleventh century nothing | 
can be found that is not derived from patristic sources. 

The great Catholic scholastics of the thirteenth century 
believed that they were reconstructing the philosophy of 
Aristotle. Few first-hand students of that great man of 
science will now be found to agree with the interpretation 
supplied by them. It is true that, despite the errors of 
philosophical interpretation, scientific elements are not 
wholly wanting in scholastic writings. Yet in that age the 
infinity of the knowable universe was passionately denied, 
originality of view was furtively hidden under the cloak of 
authority, and knowledge—so the knowers claimed—was 
always based on the wisdom of antiquity. 

Imitation rather than origination was the characteristic 
mental attitude also of the most enthusiastic scholars of the 
fifteenth century. The Revival of Learning, even the pro- 
cess by which the ancient texts were recovered, though it 
may rightly be regarded as containing scientific elements, 
had for its motive the imitation of the past by the present, 
rather than the modern archaeological aim of the mental 
reconstruction of the past with the object of understanding 
the present. The ablest writers of the time sought to be- 
come the ‘ apes of Cicero.’ What is true of the literary 
studies of the Renaissance is just as true of the scientific 
studies of the period. The rescue of the Greek texts enor- 
mously enlarged the mental horizon, it is true, but it kept 
vision ever on one plane. It chained men’s minds more : 
closely than ever to the past, though it was a newly dis- 
covered past. Even the revolt against the ‘ Arabists,’ led _ 
with such enthusiasm by the classical scholars, had for its — ; 
object a yet closer return to antiquity. cr 


From BIBL, NAT. MS. LAT. 7028 fo. 154fr 


Fic. 30.—TENTH-CENTURY FIGURE SHOWING ZODIACAL SCHEME 
In the centre is the figure of Christ in the attitude of benediction. Around him are the signs of the 
Zodiac assigned each to a part of the body. Thus we read Aries d(ominatu)r frons hominis, Taurus 
d(ominatu)r nares, and so through the body to Pisces d(ominatu)r tibie. Above the scribe has written 
Secundum philosopkorum deliramenta notantur duodecima signa ita ab arietem incipiamus, “ According to the 
ravings of the philosophers the twelve signs are thus assigned. We begin with the Ram”; and 


below, Hee omnia signa sunt corporis hominis et signa sunt solis in celo apparentis, At the four corners ate 
four figures representing the four seasons. 


64] 


~ 


er 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 65 


There is a point, however, at which those interested in 
phenomena—the physicists, and especially the physicians, 
—show a general willingness to turn their gaze from the 
past and toward the future. We may at least say of the 
two great works that appeared in 1543 that they present 
a new thing in that their authors are looking to the future 
for the development and vindication of their views. 

The work of the aged Copernicus, though not published 
till 1543, had been prepared many years before. It is 
therefore much the more conservative of the two, and 
still bears marks of the Middle Ages on every page [Fig. 45]. 
Vesalius, on the other hand, when he published his mag- 
nificently printed and illustrated Fabrica was a vigorous 
_ young man of but twenty-eight [Fig. 46]. Only four years 
earlier he had produced a treatise which, while rejecting 
the anatomical views of the Arabists, had expressed full 
faith in the complete reliability of Galen. His conversion 
had been rapid, and now he parts definitely with the 
Middle Ages. As an anatomical observer he has become 
independent. His physiological theory, however, is still 
based on Galen just as surely as the circular orbits ascribed 
by Copernicus to the planets are derived from Aristotle. 

With Copernicus and Vesalius, however, organized and 
systematic observation had found her place. Fabricius ab 
Aquapendente (1537-1619) in Anatomy and Tycho Brahe 
(1546-1601) in Astronomy did but practise a method which 
their two great predecessors had formally initiated. But 
for the process of free generalization on such observation 
and for the effective wielding of the new weapon of experi- 
ment the world had still to wait for the generation of Galileo 
(1564-1642), Kepler (1571-1630), and Harvey (1576-1657). 


§ 2. The Dark Age 
Thus for effective purposes we may place the limits of 
the mediaeval attitude towards nature between the years 
400 and 1543, with a debatable period of another half- 
century up to 1600. This vast stretch of time is divided 


> 


SE a ee 
ye ay od ‘= 


CHRONOLOGY OF MEDIAEVAL SCIENCE 
THE CLASSICAL TWILIGHT 


Latins Greeks Fathers 
Ptolemy 
it sai 
Galen 
209A puleius Tertullian Sige 
Porphyry 
Chalcidius Lactantius 
ape -Dioscorides 399. 
Pseudo 4 -Hippocrates | Oribasius [Baptism of Constantine] 
-Apuleius Nemesius St. Ambrose 
Firmicus Avienus 
Vindician Theon St. Jerome 
4°°Nfartianus Capella THE DARK AGE | St, Augustine = 


Macrobius 

Sextus Placitus 

Marcellus Empiricus 
le) ; 

Moschion 

Boethius 

Cassiodorus 


59 


600 sidore 


7°°Rede 
Alcuin 
Been ban 


Brigena 


900 


Byrhtferth 


100°Gariopontus and other 


early Salernitans 


ranstators 
Constantine 
Adelard 


IIOO 


Avendeath. Gonzalez 
Robert of Chester 
Gerard of Cremona 
Michael Scot 

1200 


Alfred the Englishman 
Farragut 
1300 


1400 


1500 


Alexander of T'ralles 


Paul of Aegina 


First Arabian Impact 
Donnolo ~ 

* Alchandrus ’ 
Gerbert 


Herman the Cripple 


Later Salernitans 


Marbod 
Odo of Meune 


SCHOLASTIC AGE 
Experimenters 
Witelo. Adam Marsh 
Roger Bacon. Pecham 
William of Saliceto 

Theodoric 


Arnald. Mondino 
Peter of Abano 

Levi ben Gerson 
Guy de Chauliac 


Nicholas of Cusa [nus 


Purbach. Regiomonta- 

Pomponazzi 

Leonardo 

Paracelsus 

Copernicus 

Vesalius 

Fic. 31,—See page 67. 
66 


* 


AGE OF ARABIA 


500 


Gregory the Great 
tio 


1000 


 Transmuiers 
Hugh of St. Victor 
Bernard Sylvestris 
Hildegard 


Alexander of Neckam 

Alexander of Hales —- $99 

Albert 

St. Thomas Aquinas 

Grosseteste. Vincent of 
Beauvais flishman 

Bartholomew the Eng- 


I10O_ 


1300 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 67 


by an event of the highest importance for the history of 
the human intellect. Between the beginning of the tenth 
and the end of the twelfth century there was a remarkable 
outburst of intellectual activity in Western Islam. This 
movement reacted with great effect on Latin Europe, and 
especially on its views of nature, by means of works which 
gradually reached Christendom in translations from the 
Arabic. In the light of this great intellectual event we may 
divide our vast mediaeval period into three parts, an earlier 
Dark Age, an intermediate Age of Arabian Infiltration, and 
a later Scholastic Age. The Age of Arabian Infiltration may 
itself be conveniently subdivided into an earlier period of 
First Arabian Impact and a later one of Arabian Translation 
[Fig. 31]. During all these periods the general beliefs as 
to the nature of the external world hardly change, but the 
difference in presentment of the material is such that the 
mediaevalist need seldom be in doubt into which category 
to place any document from these centuries treating of a 
scientific topic. 

The task of the first mediaeval period was the conveyance 
of the remains of the ancient wisdom to later ages. During 
the closing centuries of the classical decline, the literature 
that was to be conveyed had been delimited and translated 
into Latin, the only language common to the learned West. 
We may briefly discuss this classical heritage. 

The work of Plato that is least attractive and most obscure 
to the modern mind fitted in well with the prevalent views 
of the Neoplatonists. The commentary on the Timaeus, 
prepared by Chalcidius in the third century from a transla- 
tion by Apuleius in the second, presents the basis of views 
held throughout the entire Middle Ages on the nature of 
the universe and of man. Thus the Timaeus became one 
of the most influential of all the works of antiquity, and 
especially it carried the central dogma of mediaeval science, 

the doctrine of the macrocosm and microcosm. 
Of Aristotle there probably survived only the Categories 
and the De interpretatione, translated in the sixth century by 


68 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Boethius (480-524). A Greek introduction to the Cate- 
gories had been prepared by Porphyry in the second century, 
and this also was rendered into Latin by Boethius. Thus 
the only Aristotelian writings known to the Dark Age of 
science were the logical works, and these determined the 
main extra-theological interest for many centuries. It is a 
world-misfortune that Boethius did not see his way to pre- 
pare versions of those works of the Peripatetic school that 
display powers of observation. Had a translation of Aris- 
totle’s Historia animalium or De generatione animalium 
survived, or had a Latin version of the works of Theo- 
phrastus on plants reached the earlier Middle Ages, the 
whole mental history of the race might have been different. 
Boethius repaired the omission, to some small extent, 
by handing on certain mathematical treatises of his own 
compilation, the De institutione arithmetica, the De institutione 
musica, and the (doubtful) Geometrica. ‘These works 
preserved throughout the darkest centuries some fragment 
of mathematical knowledge. Thanks to them we can at 
least say that during the long degradation of the human 
intellect, mathematics, the science last to sink with the fall 
of the Greek intellect, was not dragged down quite so 
low as the other departments of knowledge. The main 
gift of Boethius to the world, his De consolatione philosophiae, 
which preserved some classical taste and feeling, lies outside 
our field. | 
A somewhat similar service to that of Boethius w 

rendered by Macrobius (395-423) and by Martianus 
Capella (c. 500). The latter, especially in his Satyricon, 
provided the Dark Age with a complete encyclopaedia. 
The work is divided into nine books. The first two con- 
tain an allegory, in heavy and clumsy style, of the marriage 
of the god Mercury to the nymph Philology. Of the last 
seven books of the work, each contains an account of 
one of the ‘ Liberal Arts,’ grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, 
geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, a classification 
of studies that dates back to Varro (116-27 B.C., p. 10) and 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 69 


was retained throughout the Middle Ages. ‘The section on 
Astronomy has a passage containing a heliocentric view 
of the universe, a view that had been familiar to certain 
earlier Greek astronomers. The cosmology of Capella, 
like that of Chalcidius, is Neoplatonic, as is also the work 
of Macrobius, whose commentary on the Somnium 
Scipionis of Cicero gave rise to some of the most prevalent 
cosmological conceptions of the first mediaeval period. 

In addition to the little cosmography, mathematics, and 
astronomy that could be gleaned from such writings as these, 
the Dark Age inherited a group of scientific and medical 
works from the period of classical decline. By far the most 
important was the Natural History of Pliny the elder 
(A.D. 23-79, p. 12), which deeply influenced the early 
encyclopaedists. Somewhat akin to it are the Quaestiones 
naturales of the moralist Seneca (3 B.C.-A.D. 65, p. 14), 
whose ethical attitude toward phenomena delighted many 
mediaeval writers by whom he was taken for a Christian. 

Very curious and characteristic is a group of later medical 
pseudepigrapha bearing the names of Dioscorides, Hippo- 
crates, and Apuleius. These extremely popular works were 
probably all prepared or at least translated between the 
fourth and sixth centuries. They provided much of the 
medical equipment of the Dark Age and reappear in the 
early Anglo-Saxon vernacular literature (see page 141). 

Such material, then, was the basis of the mediaeval 
scientific heritage. ‘Traces of it are encountered in De 
Institutionibus divinarum et humanarum literarum of Cassio- 
dorus (490-585), perhaps the earliest general writer whose 
works bear the authentic mediaeval stamp. ‘The scientific 
heritage is, however, much more fully displayed in the 
Origines of Isidore of Seville, a late sixth-century work 
which formed a cyclopaedia of all the sciences in the form 
of an explanation of the terms proper to each. For many 
centuries Isidore was very widely read, and the series 
Isidore (560-636), Bede (673-735), Alcuin (735-804), 
Rabanus Maurus (776-856), who borrow from one another 


70 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


successively and all from Pliny, may be said to contain the 
natural knowledge of the Dark Age. These writers are 
summarized by the early eleventh-century English writer 


Fic. 32.—Spheres of Religious Influence about 4.p. 750. 


Byrhtferth (died c. 1020, see page 143), whose copious 
commentary on Bede may be regarded as the final product 
of the nature-knowledge of the Dark Age. With this some- 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE ‘1 


what belated author we part company with the Dark Age, 
and enter upon a new period, with new forces and new 
movements at work. 


§ 3. The Age of Arabian Infiltration 


The tenth century and those that follow bring us into 
relation with the wisdom of the East. In these centuries 
the relation of East and West with which we are nowadays 
familiar is reversed. In our time most Oriental peoples 
recognize the value of Western culture, and give it the 
sincerest form of flattery. The Oriental recognizes that 
with the Occident are science and learning, power and 
organization and public spirit. But the admitted superi- 
ority of the West does not extend to the sphere of religion. 
The Oriental who nowadays gladly accepts the Occidental 
as his judge, his physician, or his teacher, wholly repudiates, 
and perhaps despises, his religion. In the Europe of the 
tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries it was far other. 
The Westerner knew full well that Islam held the learning 
and science of antiquity. His proficiency in arms and 
administration had been more than sufficiently proved— 
the Occidental belief in them is enshrined in our Semitic 
words “‘ arsenal ’ and ‘ admiral.’ There was a longing, too, 
for the intellectual treasures of the East, but the same fear 
and repugnance to its religion that the East now feels for 
Western religion. And the Western experienced obstacles 
in obtaining the desired Oriental learning analogous to those 
now encountered by the Eastern in the Occident. 

The earliest definitely Oriental influence that we can 
discern as affecting ideas about nature is of the character 
of infiltration rather than direct translation. The first 
literary agents of this process appear to have been mainly 
Jews who had been under Saracen rule. Such influence 
can be traced in two works in the Hebrew language by 
Sabbatai ben Abraham ben Joel (913-82), better known 
as Donnolo, a Jew of Otranto who practised medicine at 
Rossano in Southern Italy. Donnolo learnt Arabic while 


72 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


a prisoner in Saracen hands ; he was taught the language 
by a native of Baghdad, and, like Constantine the African 
in the next century, claimed to have studied ‘ the sciences 
of the Greeks, Arabs, Babylonians, and Indians.’ He 
travelled in the Italian peninsula in search of learning, 
and must thus have spread some of his Arabic science. 
His most important work, known as the Book of Creation, 
is dated to the year 946. It is a mystical treatise of great 
historical and philological interest and involves a knowledge 
of astrology. It unquestionably draws on Arabic sources, 
and sets forth fully the ancient doctrine encountered in the 
Timaeus of the macrocosm and microcosm or parallelism 
between the external world of nature and the internal world 
of man’s body (see page 215). ‘This idea was very popular 
among the Arabian writers. 

The earliest Latin document exhibiting Oriental influence 
is a treatise on astrology to which the name ‘ Alchandrus ’ 
(Alexander ?) is attached. This work has come down to 
us in a manuscript written about 950 probably in Southern 
France. ‘The repeated use of Hebrew and Arabic equiva- 
lents for the names of constellations and planets, and the 
occasional use of Hebrew script, leave no doubt that it also 
is of Jewish origin. 

The existence of these works enables us to understand 
the Oriental influence in the mathematical writings of the 
learned Pope Silvester II (Gerbert, d. 1003), who spent some 
years in Northern Spain, where Jews are known to have 
acted as intermediaries between Moslems and Christians. 
Gerbert was, perhaps, among the earliest to introduce the 
so-called “ Arabic system ’—really the Indian system—of 
numbering, which slowly replaced the much clumsier 
Roman system, with its tiresome use of the abacus for 
simple mathematical processes. He is also believed to have 
instigated a translation from the Arabic of a work on the 
Astrolabe. 

Herman the Cripple (1013-54) spent his life at the 
Benedictine abbey of Reichenau in Switzerland. He wrote 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 73 


certain mathematical and astrological works which were 
extensively used in the following century. Herman was 


‘Fic. 33.—Spheres of Religious Influence about 1150. 


unable to read Arabic, and could not travel by reason of his 
infirmity. Yet his writings display much Oriental influence, 


Fic. 34.—Spheres of Religious Influence about 1500, 


which was almost certainly conveyed to him by wandering 
scholars of the type of Donnolo and ‘ Alchandrus.’ Similar 
though somewhat belated evidence of the influence of what 
we have called the process of Arabic infiltration is exhibited 


74 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


in the lapidary of Marbod of Anjou, Bishop of Rennes 
(1035-1123), and in the extremely widely read work on the 
medicinal use of herbs, probably composed by Odo of 
Meune, Abbot of Beauprai (Macer Floridus, d. 1161). 

The Arabic learning thus beginning to trickle through 
to the West in a much corrupted form was, however, by 
no means an entirely native Saracen product ; it was derived 
ultimately from Greek sources. There was, indeed, yet 
one channel by which the original Greek wisdom might 
still reach Europe. Communication between the West 
and the Byzantine East was very little in evidence in the 


centuries with which we are now concerned, but a Greek 


tradition still lingered in certain Southern Italian centres, 
and especially in Sicily. South Italy and Sicily remained 
for centuries under the nominal suzerainty of Byzantium, 
and the dialects of the ‘ many-tongued isle ’ bear traces to 
this very day of the Greek spoken there and in Calabria and 


Apulia, until late mediaeval times. But the Saracens had — 


begun their attacks on Sicily as early as the eighth century, 
and their rule did not cease until the Norman conquest of 
the eleventh century. The Semitic language of the Saracens 
left the same impress on the island as did their art and 
architecture, so that between the tenth and thirteenth cen- 
turies Sicily is a source of Greek and Arabic learning for 
Western Europe. 

One seat of learning in the Southern Italian area felt 
especially early the influence of the Graeco-Arabic culture. 
Salerno, on the Gulf of Naples, had been a medical centre 
as far back as the ninth century (see p. 240). It is 
clear from surviving manuscripts that, even apart from the 
Greek language, some traces of ancient Greek medicine 
lingered in Latin translation widely diffused in Magna 
Graecia during the centuries that succeeded the downfall 
of the Western Empire. Such learning as remained was 
galvanized into life by Saracenic energy and, with what we 
know of the carrying agents of Arabic culture, it is easy 
to understand the tradition that attributes the founding of 


ene 
ar 
tern 
—. 
oe 
eer 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 75 


the great medical school of Salerno to the co-operation of a 
Greek, an Arab, a Latin, and a Jew (see p. 241). From the 
latter part of the eleventh century Salernitan material is 
full of Semitic words, a few of which, such as the anatomical 
term *nucha ’ and the names of some drugs, linger in medical 
nomenclature to this day. 


§ 4. Translation from the Arabic 


A very important agent of the Arabic revival was Con- 
stantine the African (d. 1087), a native of Carthage, who 
came to Italy about the middle of the eleventh century. 
He became a monk at Montecassino, and spent the rest 
of his life turning current Arabic medical and scientific 
works into Latin. His sources are mainly Jewish writers of 
North African origin. In his desire for self-exultation 
Constantine often conceals the names of the authors from 
whom he borrows, or he gives them inaccurately. His 
knowledge of both the languages which he was treating was 
far from thorough and his translations are wretched. But 
these versions were very influential, and they remained 
current in the West long after they had been replaced by the 
better workmanship of Toledo students of the type of 
Gerard of Cremona (1114-87). It is interesting to note 
that one of Constantine’s works is dedicated to Alphanus, 
Archbishop of Salerno (d. 1085), who was perhaps the 
first medical translator direct from the Greek. 

The earliest Oriental influences that reached the West 
had thus been brought by foreign agents or carriers, but 
the desire for knowledge could not be satisfied thus. The 
movement that was soon to give rise to the universities 
was shaping itself, and the Western student was beginning 
to become more curious and more desirous of going to the 
well-springs of Eastern wisdom. 

His main difficulty was one of language. Arabic was the 
language of Eastern science and letters, and its idiom was 
utterly different from the speech of the peoples of Europe. 
Moreover, its grammar had not yet been reduced to rule 


76 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


in any Latin work, nor could teachers be easily procured. 
Even in the thirteenth century we find that Roger Bacon, 
though he clearly perceived the importance of linguistic 
study and eagerly sought to unlock the literature of foreign 
tongues, had still not found the key. He had only time to 
commence laboriously the grammatical apparatus of the 
Greek and Hebrew languages. The only way to learn 
Arabic was to go to an Arabic-speaking country. Yet this 


Albi hort : 
F RAJAN Gye 8 ae 
Bayonne "Toulouse 
on \ bonne 


oy Salamanca oegovia 

C.1055 % 

© ole 10 

oLeiria Op THERN ner 
y—— 


——2 
y 


hr 
mgrocte 
Fic. 35.—Map to illustrate the recession of Islam in the Spanish 


peninsula. The figures after the names of the towns are the dates of their 
conquest by Christendom. 


was a dangerous and difficult adventure, involving hardship, 
secrecy, and perhaps abjuration of faith. Moreover, to 
learn the language at all adequately for rendering scientific 
treatises into Latin meant a stay of years, while the work 
of translation demanded also some understanding of the 
subject-matter to be translated. There is good evidence 
that an effective knowledge of this kind was very rarely 
attained by Westerns, and probably never until the later 
twelfth century. 

At the period during which Western science began to 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 77 


draw from Moslem sources there were only two areas of 
contact of the two cultures: these were respectively Spain 
and ‘ the Sicilies.’ The conditions in the two were some- 
what similar. In the tenth century the Iberian peninsula 
was Moslem save for the small kingdoms of the French 
march, Leon, Navarre, and Aragon. Here the grip of 


Fic, 36.—Italy at the beginning of the thirteenth century. 


Islam had soon relaxed and this territory remained his- 
torically, religiously, racially, and linguistically a part of 
the Latin West. ‘The Moslem South was ruled from Cor- 
dova, which became increasingly Mohammedanized, but 
at the more northern Toledo the subject population, though 
speaking an Arabic patois, remained in the main Christian, 
though with a very large Jewish element. In 1085 Alphonso 
VI of Leon (Alphonso I of Castille), aided by the Cid, 
conquered Toledo, and there most of the work of trans- 
mission took place. 


78 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


The schools of Southern Italy and Sicily were on the 
whole less influential, though their work of translation 
continued to a somewhat later date. ‘They are, however, 
important in another respect, for from them went forth 
the first renderings of scientific works made direct from 
the Greek. These translations of scientific works direct 
from the Greek began to appear as early as the eleventh 
century, when Alphanus, Archbishop of Salerno (d. 1085), 
produced a Latin version of a work by Nemesius (fourth 
century). Such translations increased in number and 
importance gradually and very slowly. A most interesting 
worker in Sicily was Burgundio of Pisa (d. 1194), who 
made translations both from the Arabic and the Greek. 


It is evident that the process of translation from Arabic, 


especially in Spain, was frequently carried on by the inter- 
vention of Jewish students, and many of the translated 
works were themselves by Jews. ‘The tenth, eleventh, and 
twelfth centuries, a time of low degradation of the Latin 
intellect, was the best period of Jewish learning in Spain. 
Arabic was the natural linguistic medium of these learned 
Jews. Among them were the Egyptian physician Isaac 
Israeli ben Solomon (d. c. 1000), called in the West Isaac 
Judaeus, Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-58 ?) of Saragossa, 
who was disguised in scholastic writings as Avicebron, 
and Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204) of Cordova, more 
familiarly known as Maimonides. ‘These three authors 
were among the more important and influential that were 
rendered into Latin from Arabic during the Middle Ages, 
and their works form part of the Eastern heritage won by 
the translators during these centuries. All three deeply 
influenced Western scholasticism. 

In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, 
when the tide had turned and Islam was in retreat, it was 
occasionally possible for a scholar with a gift for languages, 
such as Gerard of Cremona (1114-87), to find a skilled 
native Christian teacher. But in the tenth or eleventh 
century Christian learning and Christian society in Spain 


RI Miah SAT = AIR ey PO a ee 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 79 


were subject and depressed. Like many modern peoples 
similarly placed, these native Christians were attached with 
the more fanaticism to the religion which held them together 
and to the language of their Church. The student of an 
earlier time could find no effective Christian teacher of 
literary Arabic, while the very sciences which he sought 
to acquire were suspect as the mark of the infidel and the 
oppressor. 

It thus comes about that there is some obscurity— 
much of it doubtless intentional—as to the circumstances 
under which the best translations from the Arabic were 
made. It is apparent, however, that these earlier versions 
were sometimes prepared by a group of three or more 
who would interpret one to the other. One would turn 
the Arabic text, sentence by sentence, into the vernacular 
or into Hebrew, another would then render it into Latin, 
and perhaps a third would turn it into literary form. 
Naturally, in this process many words would be encountered 
that could not be rendered either into the vernacular or 
into the barbarous Latin of the time. Especial difficulty 
would be encountered with technical terms. The meaning 
of some of these might well be imperfectly known to the 
translators themselves. Such words were therefore often 
simply carried over, transliterated, in their Arabic or 
Hebrew form, and the early versions are full of Semitic 
expressions. ‘The Latin mediaeval astronomical and mathe- 
matical vocabularies especially abound in these Semitic 
words, many of which, such as ‘ azure,’ ‘ zero,’ ‘ zenith,’ 
‘ cipher,’ ‘ azimuth,’ ‘ algebra,’ ‘ nadir,’ and names of stars, as 
* Aldebaran’ and ‘ Altair,’ are stillin use. Most of the Latin 
medical literature of the Middle Ages was also of Arabian 
origin and contained a whole host of Semitic words which, 
however, were almost all displaced by equivalents of Greek 
origin during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

The sort of translation which emerged from the process 
that we have described may well be imagined. When 
it is also remembered that to reach the Arabic from the 


80 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


original Greek the text had sometimes already passed 
through similar stages with Syriac or Hebrew as inter- 
mediaries, it will be understood that the first scientific books 
that reached the West were often but travesties of the 
Greek originals from which they were ultimately derived. 

Men who may be supposed to have worked in such a 
way as we have pictured are Adelard of Bath (c. 1100), 
who journeyed both to Spain and to Sicily, and published 
a compendium of Arabic science, and the wizard Michael 
Scot (1175 ?-1234 ?), who visited the court of Frederick IT 
at Naples and produced versions or abridgements of the 
biological works of Aristotle. Such men, like Gerbert 
before them and Peter of Abano after them, were frequently 
accused of magical practices. More scientific in their 
methods and probably better equipped linguistically were 
Robert of Chester (c. 1144), who rendered the Koran into 
Latin and translated the valuable arithmetic of Al Khowar- 
izmi (fl. 830) as well as works on alchemy and astronomy, 
and Alfred the Englishman (c. 1180), who translated from 
Arabic a corrupted work of the Aristotelian school on 
plants that would otherwise be lost. Robert and Alfred 
worked in Spain. 

But the greatest and most typical of all the translators 
from the Arabic was Gerard of Cremona (1114-87), 
who spent many years at Toledo and obtained a thorough 
knowledge of Arabic from a native Christian teacher. 
He is credited with having translated into Latin no less than 
ninety-two complete Arabic works. Many of them are 
of very great length, among them being the Almagest of 
Ptolemy, on which Regiomontanus (p. 101) began his work 
in the fifteenth century, and the enormous Canon of 
Avicenna (980-1037), perhaps the most widely read medical 
treatise ever penned, editions of which continued to be 
issued right down to the middle of the seventeenth century. 
The Canon of Avicenna is still in current use in the East. 

Contemporary with Gerard of Cremona, and perhaps 


stimulated by him, were certain native translators. One 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 81 


of these was Domenico Gonzalez (Gundissalinus, fl. 1140), 
a Christian who rendered into Latin the Physica and the 
De caelo et mundo of Aristotle. Another Spaniard, Johannes 
Hispalensis or Ibn Daud, known to the Latins as Avendeath 
(fl. 1130-55), was a converted Jew. Avendeath trans- 
lated, among many other works, the pseudo-Aristotelian 
treatise Secretum secretorum philosophorum which greatly 
influenced Roger Bacon, as well as the astronomical works 
of the Baghdad Jewish writer Messahalah (Ma scha’a 
Allah=* What God will,’ 770-820). This Latin transla- 
tion of Messahalah long formed the staple popular account 
of the system of the world under the name of the English- 
man John Holywood (‘ Sacrobosco,’ d. 1256). Gonzalez 
and Avendeath, like Gerard, worked at Toledo. 

The Sicilian group was less active. The Optics of 
Ptolemy was translated about 1150 by the Sicilian admiral 
Eugenius of Palermo. He rendered it from the Arabic, 
though he had an effective knowledge of Greek. The great 
astronomical and mathematical system of Ptolemy known 
to the Middle Ages as the Almagest was also first translated 
into Latin from the Arabic in Sicily in 1163 (some twelve 
years before it was rendered by Gerard at Toledo), and 
Arabian versions only of the work were available until the 
fifteenth century. The last important translator of Sicilian 
origin, the Jew Farragut (Farradj ben Selim, Moses Farachi, 
d. 1285), was a student at Salerno, and his works were 
among the latest of any influence that issued from that 
ancient seat of learning. Such later translators were, how- 
ever, usually less influential, and at the end of the thirteenth 
century we may say that the period of important translations 
was rapidly closing. 


§ 5. Content of Mediaeval Science. The Astrological Clue 


We have now to turn to the actual material thus con- 
veyed to Latin Christendom. It differed rather in degree 
than in kind from that of the earlier Dark Age and from that 
of the age of Arabian infiltration. The systems differed 

6 


82 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


in the extent to which certain logical conclusions from. th 
premises provided were pushed, and in the amount of which 
each was influenced by certain theological conceptions. — 4 

In the late classical age there had developed the Stoic 
system of thought, which divided with Neoplatonism and ~— 
Epicureanism all the more philosophical minds of the 
ancient world. This Stoic philosophy assumed that man’s — 
fate was determined by an interplay of forces, the nature As 
and character of which were, in theory at least, completely Pe 
knowable. The microcosm, man, reflected the macrocosm, 
the great world, that lay around him. But how and to wha 
extent did the one reflect the other? In seeking to determine — 
these points Stoicism, like Neoplatonism and the other — 
philosophical systems of the classical twilight, gleaned, from 
many sources, material which it passed on in a corrupted 
state to the Latin West. In a somewhat less imperfec 
form such material lingered for centuries in the Byzantin: 
East, until, with the great outburst of Islam, it was caugh 
up and elaborated by the Arabic culture. ‘Thus elaborated 
it was sent forth a second time to Latin Europe by the Ls x 
of infiltration and translation. ae 

The astrological conceptions of the Stoics and of th 
later Christian ages had drawn both on Plato and on Aris 
~ totle. The hylozoism of the Timaeus, the doctrine that 
the universe itself and the matter of which it is composed is 
living, gave a suggestive outline to the hypothesis of the 
parallelism of the outer and inner universe. But the mz 
details, on which the hypothesis was based, were drawn 
from Aristotle, whose views or supposed views as to t 
structure of the universe formed the framework on whic! 
the whole of mediaeval science from the thirteenth century 
onward was built. Especially Aristotle’s conception of th 
stars as living things, of a nature higher and nobler than tha 
of any substance or being in the spheres below, was 
point of departure from which the influence of the heavenl 
bodies over human destinies might be developed. Change: 
undergone by bodies on the earth below—all phenomena 


[zg 
"1g oded 99g = ‘ajujua}0d UsA}seq 


UL WOIF [VUISIIO SIquIW dy} SdATadez OY 34ST oy UD ‘nofuy Jo savy 0} vONE[sueI sty sIoATTOp INSLIIL, IO] 943 UD 


LOOVEUVA AG NOLLVISNVUL NILVI V dO 821 NALLY ‘LdTYOSONVIW ¥ WOwI—Lé ‘org 


oe see a 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 83 


fact—were held to be controlled by parallel movements in 
the heavens above [Figs. 30, 38, 42; especially Plate II, see 
page 219]. 

The theory carried the matter farther. Taking its clue 
from the Aristotelian conception of the ‘ perfection ’ of the 
circle among geometrical figures, it distinguished the per- 
fect, regular, circular motion of the fixed stars from the im- 
perfect, irregular, linear motion of the planets. The fixed 
stars, moving regularly in a circle, controlled the ordered 
course of nature, the events that proceeded in recurring, 
manifest, and unalterable rounds, such as winter and 
summer, night and day, growth and decay. The planets, on 
the other hand, erratic or at least errant in their movements, 
governed the more variable and less easily ascertainable 
events in the world around and within us, the happenings 
that make life the uncertain, hopeful, dangerous, happy 
thing it is. It was to the ascertainment of the factors 
governing this kaleidoscope of life that astrology set itself. 
The general outline was fixed, death in the end was sure, 
and, to the believing Christian, life after it. But there was 
a great uncertain zone between the sure and the unsure that 
might be predicted and perhaps avoided, or, if not avoided, 
its worst consequences abated. It was to this process of 
insurance that the astrologer set himself, and his task re- 
mained the same throughout the Middle Ages. In this 
hope, savoir afin de prévoir, the mediaeval astrologer was 
at one with the modern scientist. The matter is summarized 
for us by Chaucer (1340 ?-1400) : 


Paraventure in thilke large book, 

Which that men clipe the hevene, y-writen was 
With sterres, whan that he his birthe took, 
That he for love sholde han his deeth, allas | 
For in the sterres, clerer than is glas, 

Is written, God woot, whoso koude it rede, 
The deeth of every man, withouten drede. 


posed! But: mennes wittes ben so dulle 
That no wight kan wel rede it atte fulle. 
The Man of Lawes Tale. 


84 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


In the earlier Middle Ages, however, as in the earliest 
Christian centuries, the world was but God’s footstool 
and all its phenomena were far less worthy of study than 
were the things of religion. In the view of many patristic 
writers the study of the stars was likely to lead to indif- 
ference to Him that sitteth above the heavens. ‘This is 
the general attitude of the fourth and fifth centuries, set 
forth for instance by Augustine, who speaks of ‘ those 
impostors the mathematicians (i.e. astrologers) . . . who 
use no sacrifice, nor pray to any spirit for their divinations, 
which arts Christian and true piety consistently rejects and 
condemns.’ 

By the sixth and seventh centuries, however, the Church 
had come to some sort of terms with astrology, and Isidore 
regards it as, in part at least, a legitimate science. He 
distinguishes, however, between natural and superstitious 
astrology. The latter is ‘the science practised by the 
mathematici who read prophecies in the heavens, and place 


the twelve constellations [of the Zodiac] as rulers over the 


members of man’s body and soul, and predict the nativities 
and dispositions of men by the courses of the stars.’. Never- 
theless Isidore accepts many of the conclusions of astrology. 
He advises physicians to study it, and he ascribes to the 
moon an influence over plant and animal life and control 
over the humours of man, while he accepts without 
question the influence of the dog-star and of comets. 
He is followed by the other Dark Age writers on natural 
knowledge, who accept successively more and more 
astrological doctrine. 

With the advent of the Arabian learning the matter was 


carried further, and astrology became the central interest. 


It retained this position until the triumph of the experi- 
mental method in the seventeenth century. We cannot here 
follow the details of the developed astrological scheme. 
It is enough for our purposes to have observed that the 
general material law which it implies had become widely 
accepted in the Middle Ages, and to have traced its passage 


x 
= 
a: 
+ get 
oo 

> 
an 
ee 
< 

' 

# 


From BIBL. NAT. MS. LAT. 11229 fo. 45 v 


Fic. 38—ZODIACAL SCHEME FROM A FRENCH MS. OF ABOUT 1400 


It is a scheme of the Universe in which the central Earth is replaced by the body of man. Around 
him circle the seven planets in the order, from within outwards, of Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, 
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Each planet is connected with one or with two signs in the outermost sphere, 
that of the signs of the Zodiac. These signs act through the planets on the various parts of the 
body. Against each of these signs is written the part of the body which it controls. Thus, Aries 
D(abe)t caput et faciem, Taurus h(abe)t collu(m) ad p(ri)nci(pium) hu(meri) down to Pisces pedes et ex(tre)mi(ta)tes. 


84] 


~~ 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 85 


from antiquity and from the Orient into the thought of the 
West and of the period of which we are treating. 

Especial attention was always paid to the zodiacal signs 
and to the planets. Each zodiacal sign was held to govern 
or to have special influence on some region of the body, 
and each of the planets was held to influence a special 
organ. ‘l’he supposed relations of zodiacal signs, planets, 
and bodily parts and organs, together with their power to 
produce disease, had been set forth in such late Latin 
writers as Firmicus Maternus (c. 330) and Avienus (c. 380) 
and in innumerable Greek texts. This belief, conveyed 
to the Dark Age, but much corrupted and attenuated during 
its course, was brought back again to the West, reinforced 
and developed, in translations from the Arabic during the 
scholastic period which followed [Figs. 30, 38, 42]. 


§ 6. Scholasticism and Science 


Doctrine of this type received into Europe was stamped 
with the special form of Western thought. Now, it was 
characteristic of the mediaeval Western thinker that, like 
the early Greek thinker, he sought always a complete 
scheme of things. He was not content to separate, as we 
do, one department of knowledge or one class of phenomena, 
and consider it in and by itself. Still less would he have 
held it a virtue to become a specialist, to limit his outlook to 
one department with the object of increasing the sum of 
knowledge in it, and in it alone. 

His universe, it must be remembered, so far as it was 
material, was limited. The outer limit was the primum 
mobile, the outermost of the concentric spheres of which 
the Aristotelian world was composed. Of the structure 
and nature of all within the sphere of the primum mobile 
he had been provided with a definite scheme. The self- 
appointed task of mediaeval science was to elaborate that 
scheme in connexion with the moral world. This was 
first especially undertaken by mystical writers working 
under the stimulus of the new Arabian influence. Such 


86 - FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


authors as Hugh of St. Victor (1095-1141), who drew on 
the earlier and more vague Arabian rumours, Bernard 
Sylvestris (c. 1150), who relied on Herman the Cripple 
(1013-54), and Hildegard (1099-1180), who was in- 
fluenced by Bernard Sylvestris and by other Arabicized 
writings, all produced most elaborate mystical schemes 
based on the doctrine of the macrocosm and microcosm. 
One of these schemes we discuss elsewhere in this volume 
(Essay VI, p. 215). These schemes took into account the 
form of the world and of man as derived from Arabian 
sources, and read into each relationship a spiritual meaning. 
For such an attitude of mind there could be no ultimate 
distinction between physical events, moral truths, and 
spiritual experiences. In their fusion of the internal and 
external universe these mystics have much in common with 
the mystics of all ages. The culmination of the process, 
so far as our period is concerned, is reached with Dante 
(1265-1321). [See Fig. 39.] 

But with the thirteenth century new currents of thought 
set in. Arabian science had at last been won, the scientific 
works of Aristotle were becoming accessible and gradually 
entering the curriculum, the universities were firmly estab- 
lished, and there were the beginnings of a knowledge of 
Greek. A contemporary religious movement of vast im- 
portance was the foundation of the mendicant religious 
orders, the activities of which largely replaced those of the 
monastic Benedictines. Among these new orders were 
two that specially influenced the Universities, the Domini- 
cans or Black Friars founded at ‘Toulouse in 1215 by the 
austere and orthodox Dominic (1170-1221) and the Fran- 
ciscans or Grey Friars founded in 1209 by the gentle and 
loving Francis of Assisi. ‘The contributions of the Carme- 
lites or White Friars and the Hermits or Austin (Augus- 
tinian) Friars were less weighty. ‘The name of Dominic is 
associated with the terrible extermination of the Albigenses, 
and the Dominicans, whose name was paraphrased as 
Domini canes, ‘ hounds of the Lord,’ set themselves to the 


ope eo See eo sai 
ee ee oe ee ee ee 


SS ee a a a ea 


ee ee 8 ee 


x ‘ ‘ at; 
bi \ ks ; 
‘ NNER. JERUSALEM . 


vite | L] itt 


“ Bahk 


Fic. 39.—Dante’s Scheme of the Universe modified from Michelangelo Caetani, Duca di 
Sermoneta, La materia della Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri, Monte Cassino, 1855. 


87 


88 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


strengthening of the doctrine of the Church and to the 
extirpation of error. The work of the Franciscans led up 
more clearly to the scientific revival. During the thirteenth 
century these two orders provided most of the great univer- 
sity teachers, who occupied themselves in marshalling the 
new knowledge and making it more accessible. Alexander 
of Hales (d. 1245) and Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253) were 
Franciscans, Albertus Magnus (1206-80) and St. Thomas 
Aquinas (1227-74) were Dominicans. 

A foremost influence in the revival was the recovery 
of the writings of Aristotle. It was the interpretation of 
these works by a few great thinkers that gave to Scholas- 
ticism its essential character, Thus it is that the history 
of the recovery of the Aristotelian corpus has been a main’ 
theme of writers on mediaeval thought for over a century. 
The first scholastic to be acquainted with the whole works 
of Aristotle was Alexander of Hales. Albert was the first 
who reduced the whole philosophy of Aristotle to systematic 
order with constant reference to the Arabian commentators, 
while Aquinas remodelled the Aristotelian philosophy in 
accordance with the requirements of ecclesiastical doctrine. 
As time went one, the works of Aristotle, at first represented 
in translations from Arabic, became partially accessible 
in renderings direct from the Greek. A very important 
agent in this process was the Dominican William of Moer- 
beke (d. 1286). “Those whose interests direct their attention 
to the Revival of Learning associated with Humanism 
are apt to forget, however, that texts of these translations 
from the Greek were excessively rare till the sixteenth 
century despite the advent of printing. Moreover they 
remained far from common till the seventeenth century, 
and the staple education of all but a few universities was 
still based on versions from the Arabic as late as the time of 
Francis Bacon, Galileo and Descartes and even beyond. 

It is remarkable that the process of codifying the new 
knowledge derived from the Arabic, involving as it did a 
rapid development in the whole mental life, did not early 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 8g 


give rise to a more passionate and more conscious faith in 
the reality and value of progress in knowledge. The test of 
such faith, so far as nature is concerned, must be the direct 
appeal to nature. Yet there is very little evidence of direct 
observation of nature in the great physical encyclopaedias 
of the thirteenth century, such as those of the Augustinian 
Alexander of Neckam (1157-1217), the Dominican Vincent 
de Beauvais (1190-1264), or the Franciscan Bartholomew of 
England (c. 1260). The fact is that the mediaeval mind was 
obsessed with the idea of the world as mortal, destructible, 
finite, and therefore completely knowable both in space and 
in time. Thus the motive for detailed research, in our 
modern sense of the word, was hardly present. One great 
Islamic philosopher there was, Averroes (Ibn Roschd, d. 
1198), who took an opposite view. His works were available 
in Latin, but the great ecclesiastics set their face against 
him, though he was widely and illicitly read. Moreover 
his theories were adopted by Jews and Latins with 
heretical leanings, tacit or expressed. 

The mediaeval world thus knew nothing of that infinite 
sea of experience on which the man of science nowadays 
launches his bark in adventurous exploration. The task 
of the writers of these encyclopaedias was rather to give a 
general outline of knowledge, to set forth such a survey 
of the universe as would be in accord with spiritual truth. 
The framework on which this encyclopaedic scheme was 
built was Aristotle, largely as conveyed by his Arabic 
commentator Averroes, the philosopher whom the heads 
of the Church had condemned. Yet it is an amusing 
reflection on the incompleteness of all philosophical systems 
that Albert (1206-80), who perhaps more than any 
man was responsible for the scholastic world-system, 
was among the very few mediaeval writers who were real 
observers of nature. It is, after all, in the very essence of 
the human animal to love the world around it and to watch 
its creatures. Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret. 
Albert, scholastic of the scholastics, drowned in erudition and 


go FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


the most learned man of his time, has left us evidence in 
his great works on natural history that the scientific spirit 
was beginning to awake. As an independent observer he 
is not altogether contemptible, and this element in him marks 
the new dawn which we trace more clearly in his successors. — 


§ 7. The Dawn of Modern Science. Roger Bacon 


Thus the best of the systematizers among the schoolmen 
were leading on to the direct observation of nature. Con- 
temporary with Albert (1206-80) and Aquinas (1227-74) 
were several remarkable scholastic writers who form the 
earliest group with whom the conscious advancement of 
knowledge was a permanent interest. These men were the 
first consciously forward-looking scientific thinkers since 
the fourth century. Perhaps the most arresting of them 
was Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln. 
Grosseteste determined the main direction of physical 
investigation in the thirteenth century by his work on Optics. 
He knows something of the action of mirrors and of the 
nature of lenses. It would appear that he had actually 
experimented with lenses, and many of the optical ideas of 
Roger Bacon were taken straight from his master. The 
main Arabian source of Grosseteste was a Latin translation 
of the mathematical work of Alhazen of Basra (965-1038). 
Another important optical writer whom Alhazen deeply 
influenced was the Pole Witelo (fl. 1270), an acute mathe- 
matical investigator who worked in northern Italy. Roger 
Bacon was largely dependent on Witelo. 

The opposition between the followers of Dominic and of 
Francis was paralleled by certain very remarkable develop- 
ments among the Franciscans themselves. There is no 
stranger and more impressive chapter in the whole history 
of thought than that of the early history of the Franciscans. 
Within the memory of men who had known the saintly 
founder of the order (1181-1226), the ‘ penitents of Assisi,’ 
the ‘ friars minor,’ sworn as ‘ jongleurs of God ’ to bring 
Christ cheerfully to the humblest and the meanest, sworn — 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE QI 


to possess nothing, to earn their bread from day to day by 
the work of their own hands or at need by begging, for- 
bidden to lay by store or to accumulate capital, this order 
of humble servants of Christ had produced a series of 
monumental and scholarly intellects. These men not 
only initiated what bid fair to be a renaissance of science 
and letters, but also aided in the formation of the bulwark 
which long resisted the very movement that thus emanated 
from the order itself. To both parties the English Fran- 
ciscan houses contributed an overwhelming share. To 
the former, or scientific party, as we may call it, belonged 
Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (c. 1175-1253), John 
Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1292), the elusive 
Adam Marsh (d. 1257), and above all Roger Bacon (1214- 
94). To the latter or theological party are attached the 
names of Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), Duns Scotus 
(1265 ?-1308 ?), and William of Ockham (d. 1349). 

The primary inspirer of the scientific movement was 
the great Bishop of Lincoln himself, as we learn from his 
pupil Roger. ° Nobody,’ says Bacon, ‘ can attain to pro- 
ficiency in the science of mathematics by the method 
hitherto known unless he devotes to its study thirty or 
forty years . . . and that is the reason why so few study 
that science. . . . Yet there were found some famous men, 
as Robert [Grosseteste] Bishop of Lincoln, and Adam Marsh, 
and some others, who knew how by the power of mathe- 
matics to unfold the causes of all things and to give a suffi- 
cient explanation of human and divine phenomena. The 
assurance of this fact is to be found in the writings of those 
great men, as, for instance, in their works on the impression 
[of the elements], on the rainbow and the comets, on the 
sphere, and on other questions appertaining both to theology 
and to natural philosophy.’ The work of this remarkable 
group of Franciscans at Oxford extended beyond the sciences 
to language and literature. There was thus the beginning 
of a real renaissance of Greek letters which died an early 
death. After Roger Bacon’s death the scientific revival 


g2 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


also languished until recalled to life by a second revival 
of a later century. 

It may be convenient to give a summary of the scientific 
achievements of Roger Bacon, the greatest of the Fran- 


ciscan group and the first man of science in the modern 


sense. 

1. He attempted to set forth a system of natural know- 
ledge. ‘This system was far in advance of his time, and its 
basis was observation and experiment. He was clearly 
the first man in modern Europe of whom this can 
be said. 

2. He was the first to see the need for the accurate study 
of foreign and ancient languages. He attempted grammars 


of Greek and Hebrew along definite scientific lines. He 


also projected a grammar of Arabic. Moreover, he laid 
down those lines of textual criticism which have only been 
developed within the last century. 

3. He not only discussed the nature of the experimental 
method, but was himself an experimenter. His writings 
are important for the development of the following sciences : 

(a) Optics. His work on this subject was a textbook 
for the next two centuries. He saw the importance of 
lenses and concave mirrors, and showed a grasp of the 
mathematical principles of optics. He described a system 
equivalent to a two-lens apparatus, and there is trustworthy 


evidence that he actually used a compound system of lenses 


equivalent to a telescope. 

(b) Astronomy was Bacon’s perpetual interest. He spent 
the best part of twenty years in the construction of astro- 
nomical tables. His letter to the Pope in favour of the 
correction of the calendar, though unsuccessful in his 
own day, was borrowed and reborrowed, and finally, at 
third-hand, produced the Gregorian correction. 

(c) Geography. He was the first systematic geographer 
of the Middle Ages. He gave a systematic description of 
Europe, Asia, and part of Africa. He collected first-hand 


evidence from travellers in all these continents. His 


- a ae — er 
yee Ae ee ee a (= 


ee Ee ee Se Ee Le ee en, Soe n, are eae 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 9Q3 


arguments as to the size and sphericity of the earth were 
among those that influenced Columbus. 

(d) Mechanical Science. Suggestions by him include 
the automatic propulsion of vehicles and vessels. He 
records a plan for a flying machine. 

(e) Chemistry. ‘The chemical knowledge of his time was 
systematized in his tracts. His description of the composi- 
tion and manufacture of gunpowder is the earliest that has 
reached us. It is clear that he had worked out for himself 
some of the chemistry of the subject. 

(f) Mathematics. His insistence on the supreme value 
of mathematics as a foundation for education recalls the 
attitude of Plato. It was an insistence that the method 
of thought was at least as important as its content. 

Summed up, his legacy to thought may be regarded as 
accuracy of method, criticism of authority, and reliance on 
experiment—the pillars of modern science. 

Bacon was not an isolated phenomenon, but an important 
link in the chain of scientific development. But during the 
century after Bacon, though his mathematical and philo- 
sophical works were still studied in the schools, the greatest 
advances were to be found among the physicians. Of 
medical men the last half of the thirteenth and the first 
half of the fourteenth century exhibit an especially brilliant 
group. Bologna had possessed a medical school since the 
twelfth century, and had inherited the learning of Salerno. 
At Bologna had worked Hugh of Lucca (d. 1252 ?) and 
his son or pupil Theodoric (1206-98). Here surgery 
may be said to have been born again with the practice of 
Roland of Parma (c. 1250), the successor and faithful follower 
of Roger of Salerno (c. 1220). At Bologna, above all, 
William of Saliceto (1215-80), backed by the authority of 
Thaddeus of Florence (1223-1303), established a practical 
method of anatomization which was inherited by Mondino 
da Luzzi (1276-1328), whose work based on translations 
from the Arabic text of Avicenna became the general 
anatomical textbook of the later Middle Ages. By the 


94 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


fourteenth century the practice of dissection of the human 
body had become well recognized [Fig. 40]. 


Stee eee VY Pk 
SShL ZZ Ie 


LN 
oe POY SS SB_ SS 


Fic. 40.—Mondino directing a dissection, From a fifteenth-century 
woodcut. 


At the end of the thirteenth century the ancient founda- 
tion of the medical school of Montpellier was coming tothe __ 
fore. The Catalan Arnald of Villanova (1235-1311), one — 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 95 


of the most remarkable personalities of mediaeval medicine, 
taught there. Arnald was not only one of the earliest 
exponents of the Hippocratic method of observing and 
carefully recording symptoms of actual cases of disease, 
but he also deeply influenced alchemy. That study was 
effectively of Arabian origin so far as the western world is 
concerned. It begins in 1144 with the translation into 
Latin from Arabic by Robert of Chester of the De com- 
posttione alchemiae which Morienus Romanus, a contem- 
porary hermit of Jerusalem, had ‘ edited for Kalid, king of 
the Egyptians.’ Alchemy had taken its rise with a real 
effort to understand the properties of metals, prompted by 
the hope of transmuting the baser into the more precious. 
Like other mediaeval studies, it became linked with astrology, 
and the ‘ seven metals ’ were each of them controlled or 
influenced by the ‘ seven planets ’ much in the same way as 
were the organs of the human body. Of such ideas Arnald 
was a prolific exponent. He had direct access to both 
Arabic and Hebrew. A student at Naples and Salerno, 
a traveller in Italy, Sicily, France, and Spain, he served as 
medical adviser to the Papal Curia both at Rome and Avignon 
and was employed as ambassador on more than one special 
mission. Arnald influenced politics no less than learning 
and ended his adventurous life at sea. A character very 
different from Arnald was the Majorcan Raymond Lull 
(1235-1313), who was also learned in oriental languages. 
The numerous alchemical works bearing Lull’s name are, 
however, falsely ascribed to him. Lull was a visionary who 
perished as he desired, in his attempt to convert the Moham- 
medan world. 


§ 8. Humanism 


In outlook no less remarkable than Arnald was the 
heretical Peter of Abano (1250-c. 1318). He earned a 
reputation as a magician, and his natural death saved him 
from the hands of the Inquisition. His body is said to 
have been exhumed and burned. Peter—who was a most 


96 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


voluminous writer—had a knowledge of Greek, acquired at 
Constantinople, and he translated works from that language. 
He was a professor at the University of Paris and later 
at Padua in the generation which followed that in which 
the newly won Aristotelian works on physics had entered 
the curriculum. His greatest and best-known work, the 
Conciliator, expresses his mediation between the now 
commencing humanistic Greek school and the Arabists, 
though it appears that he had no knowledge of the Arabic 
language. From the Conciliator we may learn that he had 
come into contact with the great traveller Marco Polo 
(c. 1254-1324). Among the views of Peter of Abano that 
are most worth record may be mentioned his statements 
that the air has weight, that the brain is the source of 
the nerves and the heart of the vessels—all ideas that 
were novel in his time. He made a remarkably accurate 
measure of the length of the year as 365 days 6 hours 
4 minutes. 

The second half of the fourteenth century, perhaps 
owing to social disturbance and notably to the effects of 
the Black Death (1347-9), shows a distinct falling off 
in the intellectual advance. In medicine the most note- 
worthy name is that of Guy de Chauliac of Montpellier 
(1300-70), the most influential of all the mediaeval 
surgeons. Outside the ranks of the physicians the most 
striking figure in fourteenth-century science is probably the 
French Jewish philosopher Levi ben Gerson (1288-1344). 
His work on astronomy was important as illustrating the 
consciousness of a growing discontent with the Ptolemaic 
system of the universe. 

With the fourteenth century appeared, too, a great move- 
ment the hand of which is still heavy on our own day. 
Humanism was born. Historians have perhaps linked the 
humanistic movement too intimately with a knowledge of 
the Greek language. Instances of knowledge of that 
language in the West can, however, be adduced far back 
into the Dark Ages (e.g. John Scot Erigena, c. 850), while 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 97 


many of the greatest of the humanists, including Petrarch 
himself (1304-74), were without such knowledge. It is 
worth noting too, as linking humanism with the Middle 
Ages, that Petrarch’s epistolary style was still moulded on 
St. Augustine rather than on Cicero. 

The backward-looking habit, strong in man from his 
nature and strengthened by the teaching of the Christian 
religion, was yet further enforced by the humanists. From 
Petrarch onward they were ever brooding on the past that 
had been Greece and Rome. Yet even from the first, the 
humanists had the sensation too of being builders, so that 
their glance was at times turned away from the past and 
towards what was to come, nay, what was in the act of 
becoming. Roger Bacon and a few isolated souls had had 
this double vision, but for a whole school to possess it was 
something new. In his Book of memorable things Petrarch 
says outright, “Here stand I as though on a frontier that 
divides two peoples, looking both to the past and to the 
future.’ While studying the classics some of these very 
men were indeed visibly forging new intellectual weapons, 
those national vernaculars that have made modern literature 
and thought possible. It is no mere coincidence that 
Boccaccio (1313-75), friend and contemporary of Petrarch, 
should have been at once the first modern literary man to 
study Greek and the first great master of Italian prose. 

We must note, however, that save for reference for the 
one supreme poet in their own tongue, Dante (1265-1321), 
the backward gaze of the Italian humanist is always fixed 
on the more distant classical past, not on the nearer period 
that came to be regarded as a yawning chasm, an abyss across 
which he sought to reach back to the thought of antiquity. 
To him the Middle Ages seemed real enough and dark 
enough. It stood for the period during which the sweet 
Greek literature had been ignored. Even in this new age 
it could be understood by few except in Latin dress, and the 
work of translation remained somewhat of a specialist’s 
occupation. To the end of the fifteenth century an effective 


7 


93 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


knowledge of Greek continued to be a rarity even among 
scholars, and we may point to some of the most important 
teachers of the sixteenth century who were still without it. 

The great influence of the masterpieces of Greece, there- 
fore, was then as now something indirect, often conveyed 
through translators and special interpreters, something 
esoteric, the full beauty of which was shared only by a 
few adepts, a subtle thing that influenced men’s way of 
thinking rather than the actual content of their minds. 
The mere capacity for translation from the Greek goes back, 
as we have seen, to the eleventh century, the ninth century, 
or even beyond. It can therefore hardly have been simply 
the discovery of the actual Greek language which brought 
about the revival of letters. But if the knowledge of Greek 
goes back so far, can we speak of a real Renaissance at all ? 
How can we account for the change of heart that came over 
the world when humanism was born? Or is that change 
of heart but an illusion, a difference of degree rather 
than of kind in a world where everything is in a state of 
becoming ? 

Some answer to this absorbing question we may glean 
by comparing the earlier Greek works which came to the 
West to those of later advent. ‘The general character of 
the earlier translations was determined by the outlook of 
a world becoming ever more deeply Arabicized. Islam, 
the inheritor of antiquity, entered into the enjoyment of 
its legacy with great spirit, but with a taste already fixed. 
The literary and artistic works were debarred by a definite 
theological standpoint. Homer and Hesiod, Sophocles 
and Euripides, Greek Art and Greek Architecture were 
chapters as closed and forbidden to Islam as to early 
Christian Europe. It was the philosophical, the scientific, 
the mathematical, the medical works that made an appeal. 
These gave an illusory impression of completeness to life 
with which Islam long rested content. It was these very 
works that were the first to be rendered into Latin from 
the Arabic, and the Latin taste being thus determined it 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 99 


was similar works that were the first to be turned into 
Latin direct from the Greek. 

Such material—and it is bulky and intricate enough— 
represents the Western access to Greek wisdom before the 
fourteenth century. It does not lack variety, but it lacks 
life. ‘They err who think the discovery of the humanists 
was the Greek language—here the humanists were but 
followers where others had been pioneers. It is something 
much deeper and more fundamental which they have handed 
on to us, something the nature of which they hardly knew 
and the meaning of which they missed—which perhaps 
they still miss—in their enthusiasm. The humanists dis- 
covered the literary works of antiquity. In them they 
became absorbed to the exclusion of all else. The 
humanist eagerness passed into a literary vogue, and long 
cast the blight of a purely literary education on the 
modern world. The barren striving after form as distinct 
from substance, the miserable and slavish imitativeness 
that is no flattery but an insult to its model, these features 
exhibited typically in the literature of the late Empire, were 
repeated by the humanists as they have been often repeated 
in modern times and as they still remain a curse to the 
so-called ‘ classical education.’ 

The humanist then did not give us the knowledge of a 
language nor did he even give an insight into the life of 
antiquity. What the humanist really gave was a something 
which, added to the heritage already there, made possible 
a completer reconstruction of the Greek spirit. That re- 
construction, indeed, he was himself never able to make ; it 
was the succeeding generations that made it for themselves. 
With that reconstruction Greece lived again, the modern 
world was ushered in, and modern science, art, literature, 
and philosophy were born. It is an illuminating reflection 
and one not without bearing on our present state that 
both the mediaeval heritage of Greek science and the 
Renaissance heritage of Greek literature proved barren by 
themselves. It was not until the one fertilized the other 


*, i= : * a: Evy a 


| dele) FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


that there was real and vital growth. Modern thought, 
modern science, modern art, and modern letters are the 
offspring of that union. Let us put from our minds the 
time-worn fallacy that they are the parthenogenetically 
produced offspring of one of these elements alone. 


§ 9. The Science of the Renaissance 


The humanists as a class did not exhibit great sympathy 
with the scientific outlook. Their interests were literary 
and their peculiar aversion was the Arabist tendency of 
the Middle Ages that they were leaving behind. That 
Arabist tendency was very largely expressed in the ancient 
scientific and philosophical themes, some of which we have 
discussed in outline. In the movement initiated by Roger 
Bacon in the thirteenth century a new element had been 
introduced. That movement had fallen into the background 
after Roger’s death. It had not entirely died, but it had 
become ‘ quietist —if the expression may be used in this 
connexion—a part of the seldom expressed faith of a small 
band of philosophically-minded recluses. Faith in the 
appeal to nature was at last to find more open expression. 
With the fifteenth century, discontent with the entire 
mediaeval scientific scheme becomes more generally obvious, 
and we perceive a first hint of the idea that it may be 
possible to adjust theory by means of experiment. 

The earliest suggestion is made by a man of high genius 
and scholarship, the Rhinelander Nicholas of Cues (1401— 
64), who became a cardinal and made a fruitless attempt 
to reform the calendar. A groping towards a philosophical 
basis for the experimental method is exhibited in his book 
De docta ignorantia, which has nothing to do with the 
absurdity of erudition, as its name might be thought to 
imply, but concerns itself with acknowledged ignorance, 
i.e. with the inability of the human mind to conceive the 
infinite. The theoretical views of Nicholas led him to a 
belief that the earth is moving, though he attained to no 
genuine heliocentric theory. He records a careful experi- 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE IOI 


ment of a growing plant—afterward pirated by the seven- 
teenth-century writer van Helmont (1577-1644)—proving 
that it absorbs something of weight from the air. This is 
the first biological experiment of modern times, and inci- 
dentally the first formal proof that the air has weight. In 
another work, De staticis experimentis, Nicholas shows that 
he knew how to apply the experimental method in detail, 
and he suggests in outline many investigations which were 
not taken in hand until the time of Galileo 150 years later. 

The tradition of the combination of scholarship and ob- 
servation that Nicholas had started was carried on by several 
astronomers in the second half of the fifteenth century. 
For part of this work we are indebted to the far-sightedness 
of another cardinal, Johannes Bessarion (1389-1472), a 
Greek by birth, who was equally anxious to aid the progress 
of astronomical knowledge and to diffuse Greek literature 
in the West. Bessarion’s friendship, extended to the two 
German astronomers Purbach and Regiomontanus, made 
possible their work which formed the foundation of that of 
Copernicus. 

George Purbach (1423-61) followed with great avidity 
the study of Ptolemy. He died prematurely and had only 
translations from the Arabic on which to base his work. 
He improved on his original, however, by calculating a table 
for every 10 minutes, using sines instead of chords. 

Johannes Miiller (1436-76) of Kénigsberg (= King’s 
mountain), usually known from his birthplace as Regio- 
montanus, though his life was hardly longer than that of 
Purbach, had the good fortune to work on Greek originals. 
He produced the first systematic treatise on trigonometry 
and a table of sines for every minute and of tangents for 
every degree. He edited too the Epitome of Ptolemy which 
Purbach had left behind him in an imperfect state. He 
died at Rome, whither he had been summoned by the Pope 
to aid in the long contemplated reform of the Calendar. 
The important works of Regiomontanus were only published 
after his death [Fig. 42]. His name has become associated 


102 FROM MAGIC TO SCGIENCH Aim 


with an ill-founded legend that he taught the helidce teal 
view of the solar system before Copernicus. The statement 
has been made of several other contemporaries, Leonardo 
da Vinci (1452-1519) among them. It has been verified, 
however, for only one of them (Celio Calcagnini, 1479- 
1541), who perhaps borrowed the idea from Copernicus. _ 

The Renaissance of Letters was contemporary with the 
Renaissance of Art, and the artists had also their reaction 


Fic. 41.—Leonardo’s Parabolic compass. The pen which is shown above and to 
the left moves freely in its fitting. It is held by its own weight to the surface of the 
plane on which it is writing. The character of the curve traced by it is determined — 
by the angle with the horizontal which this plane is made to assume. When fixed | 
parallel to the limb of the compass shown to the right, a parabola will be traced. — 


upon scientific thought. The great painters had begun to 
study nature more closely. Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-98) _ 
and Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-88), among others, 
had made careful investigations of surface anatomy, while _ 
the exquisite figures of plants in the pictures of Sandro — 

Botticelli (1444-1510) mark him out as a very accurat 
observer. ‘There was, however, one artist of the time wh Be 
takes a quite peculiar place among students of nature. 
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) stands for many as the ay 
turning-point of the Renaissance into modern times. = 


FES 


View 


30 


Bo 0 


eS 
Pa’ 


Re \ 
ice) 
\ <7? mundf{ Ras S P, 
: ys aT ( if s im [| SNS E 
Wy LS SSE SES wis ave 
AMM MES =~ : = -———__*—~ ‘ 


45 


N Y \W ei | 
WER \ N : 
WS S S—> AY sas ~~ a 
= SSS” 
Sar a ty HS eves 
emer SY 


Fic. 42,—FRONTISPIECE TO THE EPITOME OF PTOLEMY’S ALMAGEST 
By Johannes Miiller (Regiomontanus), Venice, 1496 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 103 


It would be impossible to give in a paragraph the titles 
to fame of one of the very greatest geniuses that the human 
race has produced. The marvellous rapidity of his insight, 
the sureness of his intuitions, and his extreme versatility 
made earlier students place Leonardo in an isolated and 
almost non-human position. His very limitations, more- 
over, while they have increased the apparent gulf which 
separates him from other men, have hampered us in our 
comprehension of his mind. Isolated he remains by the 
loftiness of his genius, but more prolonged study has 
revealed many of the sources of his knowledge and some of 
his methods of work. 

_ To understand anything of Leonardo’s scientific work 

and of its fate we must however recognize his defects. 
Leonardo’s great limitation was on the literary and linguistic 
side. He had no gift for language and did not acquire even 
an elementary knowledge of Latin till well on in life. He 
had no power of literary expression. The language that 
he employs is that of a Florentine shopkeeper of the 
lower class. He created no great phrase or saying. In 
his notebooks his sentences are usually ungrammatical 
and often unfinished. Even allowing for the purely private 
nature of these memoranda, it is yet fairly evident that in a 
literary sense he was incoherent. The very rush of his 
ideas seems to have obstructed the natural channels of their 
expression. Of him his biographer Vasari quotes with 
admirable point the lines of Petrarch : 


E l’amor di saper che m’ha si acceso 
Che l’opera e retardato dal desio. 


My love of knowledge so inflamed me 
That my work was retarded by my very desire. 


With what we now know of Leonardo the question may 
reasonably be raised whether his art did, in fact, consume 
the major part of his energy and his thoughts. Among 
the great artists he was notorious for the smallness of his 


104 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


output and for the extreme slowness with which he worked. 
On the other hand, he left behind him a vast mass of papers, 
about 5,000 leaves of which have survived. These contain 
evidence not only of a unique scientific insight but of a 
tireless industry which is almost incredible. He covers 
the whole field of science from mathematics to physiology, 
and there is nothing that he touches which he does not 
illuminate. To give but a few scattered instances: he 
presents us not only with a model of a flying machine but 
with an invention of a helicopter, and he analyses the nature 
of the flight of birds in a way that has only been surpassed 
during the last few years ; he has a design for a parabolic 
compass on a principle that was not adopted till late in the 
seventeenth century [Fig. 41]; he hints at a heliocentric 
view of the world ; he has admirable drawings of quick- 
firing and breech-loading guns; he was an ingenious 
inventor of engineering apparatus [Fig. 44]; he has 
mastered the theoretical principles of perspective ; he sets 
forth the homologies of the vertebrate skeleton; he has 
passages which suggest the laws of motion; and his 
anatomical and embryological standpoint was not passed 
in certain respects for hundreds of years [Fig. 43]. 
Leonardo may be linked with his time by tracing some 
of his scientific ideas back to his predecessors. ‘The break 
in continuity is much more marked if we seek to trace them 
forwards. He had indeed very little influence on the science 
of the age which immediately followed him. Save in 
certain ideas and drawings of a few sixteenth-century anato- 
mists leading on to Vesalius, the scientific work of Leonardo 
was without effect until modern times. If Leonardo be 
regarded as the topmost peak of the Renaissance, that 
peak, continuous with a long range of mighty mountains — 
on one side, terminates in an almost sheer precipice on 
the other. : 
Before we quite part with the Renaissance we must 
consider another remarkable character whose life-course 


was almost as isolated and aberrant as that of Leonardo. 


‘ BE gee aka 


is , i om on 
: 2 ve hr nao mat 


Zotis OR Bee Aart OE 


a 
“OPI my POM y) 
' 

ane alte ds tswt py 
ai nt 

Ry 1 aera Pots "ah staged 


RS Pacey] 


SOP or Pye i 


PEO An asia) | 


3 
2 
arta alone enr) | 
z 


gan aod ogy! 


; : dy + Al eunrtany alate eit 
MRA C8 de ai x ; een ER a ee 


Fic, 43,—CHILD IN ITS MOTHER’S WOMB 
Drawn from the object by Leonardo. Windsor Library. 


Fic. 44.—DRAWING BY LEONARDO OF A DREDGE FOR A CANAL 


It can be made to move forward in the excavated bed. The engine works on 
two levels, at each of which is placed a semicircular series of buckets. The 
buckets are filled with earth, through wooden shoots. When filled, they are 
catried by the cranes right and left to the line of advance. When the bucket 
' teaches the bank it is emptied and the resulting bank of accumulated debris can 
be seen behind the crane. From a drawing in the Codex Aflanticus at Milan. 


104] 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE I05 


The Swiss writer Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bom-. 
bastus von Hohenheim, commonly known as Paracelsus 
(1493-1541), was a person of violent, dramatic, and repellent 
temper, a born rebel whose iconoclasm doubtless did some- 
thing to deter men from the worship of the old idols. His 
symbolic act of burning the works both of the Greek Galen 
and of the Arab Avicenna, as an introduction to his lecture 
course at Basel, typified the position of the independent 
investigators of the generation that immediately followed 
him. A writer of excessive obscurity, an obscurity of lan- 
guage, of form, and of thought, very few have claimed the 
privilege of penetrating to his full meaning, and those few 
have nearly all been infected with some of the defect of 
expression from which the master suffered. There is, 
however, a general agreement among the learned and 
nebulous band of Paracelsists that their hero did indeed 
foreshadow the ‘ new instauration.’ His aim was to see 
the world in the ‘ Light of Nature.’ That light of his 
is dimmed for us because of his extreme gullibility in some 
matters, his violence and self-contradiction in others, and 
the involved and mystical presentment in all. ‘ Nature’ 
contained for him the influence of the stars upon the lives 
of men and many other mysterious phenomena then 
generally credited. He believed still in a relation of micro- 
cosm and macrocosm—as in a residual sense we all do— 
but his free modification of that theory paved the way for 
its rejection in the generation which followed. 


§ 10. The Great Instauration 


_ Francis Bacon (1561-1620), coming at the very end of 
our period, grasped the nature of the truth that had been 
struggling to birth since the days of his great namesake. 
He called it the Instauratio Magna, the great restoration. 
Of him a modern enthusiast for research (Mark Pattison) 
has written, ‘the great instaurator of all knowledge, in 
preaching the necessity of altering the whole method of 


106 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


knowing included the method of “‘ teaching to know.” ’ Of 
the reformers of the method of teaching to know, two stand 
at the very threshold of the new era, Nicholas Copernicus 
and Andreas Vesalius. 

The Pole, Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), despite the 
vast change that was introduced in his name into men’s 
ideas, was himself more in the line of such comparatively 
conservative scholars as Nicholas of Cues and Regio- 
montanus than the more revolutionary Leonardo or Para- 
celsus. No man was ever more ‘ academic,’ and he con- 
tinued to attend university courses until over thirty years of 
age. Hestudied at several Italian universities, giving atten- 
tion to classics, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, law, 
and theology. His skill in painting suggests that he had 
that type of visualizing imagination frequently associated 
with scientific power. 

Copernicus was not, however, a first-hand observer on 
any large scale. He had, it is true, taken a number of 
observations of eclipses and oppositions of planets, but for 
the most part his results were obtained in the study. He 
tells us that he was induced to seek a new theory of the 
heavenly bodies by finding that mathematicians differed 
among themselves on this subject. He had counted up 
the various motions of the heavenly bodies involved in the 
old system and concluded that some essential factor had 
been missed. He therefore turned to antiquity and learned 
from Cicero—who quotes Hiketas—and Plutarch that some 
among the ancients were of the same opinion. 


* Occasioned by this,’ he says, ‘ I decided to try whether, on the assump- 
tion of some motion of the earth, better explanations of the revolutions 
of the heavenly spheres might not be found. ‘Thus assuming the motions 
which I attribute to the earth . . . I have found that when the motions 
of the other planets are referred to the circulation of the earth and are 
computed for the revolution of each star, not only do the phenomena 
necessarily follow therefrom, but that also the order and magnitude of 
the stars and of all their orbits and the heaven itself are so connected 
that in no part can anything be transposed without confusion to the rest 
and to the whole universe.’ 


sie ce he SS a NR ay, set ee a ’ 
Re Ns gf 5 a ee Se ge | ee en ee 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE 107 


In this new scheme the ancient theory of the uniform 
circular motion of the heavenly bodies was still retained. 
Since it involved the retention of the theory of epicycles 
as well as the displacement of the sun from the true centre 
of the planetary orbs, the simplicity of the scheme was only 
apparent and comparative [Fig. 45]. 

Vesalius (1514-64) was in almost every respect a con- 
trast to Copernicus. Young, ardent, and combative, his 


Fic. 45.—Diagram by Copernicus to show his heliocentric system. The planets, 
Earth among them, circle round the sun. The fixed stars are all at a fixed distance 
from the earth in a sphaera immobilis. 


life’s work was well-nigh complete at twenty-five, and its 
effective and creative part was crowded into the four years 
that preceded the publication of the Fabrica in 1543. The 
contents of that great work were delivered in the form of 
lecture-demonstrations to crowded audiences. It contains 
an enormous number of first-hand observations which must 
have been accumulated while working under the most 
extreme pressure. Vigorous and fearless in the demonstra- 
tion of observed fact, Vesalius becomes more timid and 


108 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


less effective in the discussion of theory, and he leaves the 
Galenic physiology practically intact. He was a man of the 
laboratory and lecture-room rather than of the study [Fig. 
46], and reflection was not the source of his power. Yet 
even his observations are by no means completely free from 
traditional bias. ‘Thus some of the poses of the figures and 
the treatment of the skeletons in his book have been shown 
to be derived from scholastic sources, and there are ana- 
tomical structures figured by him which are to be found in 
the mediaeval tradition, but not in the human body. There 
are important points which he may have derived by tradition 
from Leonardo and the artist-anatomist of the previous 
generation. Taken as a whole, his work is, however, one 
of the most marvellous efforts of scientific observation that 
has ever been launched upon the world. It is, moreover, 
the earliest important work of observational science in 
modern times [Fig. 46]. 

A word must be said as to the point of view of Vesalius. 
Nowadays the student’s dissection-manual figures for 
him the anatomy of the dead. Vesalius working in Italy 
in the sixteenth century was in the midst of a country of 
artists. He thinks always of the living body and seeks to 
restore the anatomy of the part into its form when living. 
The dramatic poses of his corpses and the landscape with 
which each is provided is no piece of idle artistry. Itisa 
part of hisscheme. Nor does he think so much of the actual 
body he is dissecting as of the idea towards which God is 
tending in us all. Each body is, as it were, one of that 
supreme artist’s ‘ studies’ for an ideal and final work of 
art. It is the anatomist’s duty to attain as near as he can 
to that ideal. 

The work of Vesalius was carried farther by a number 
of investigators in the latter part of the sixteenth century, 
but by none with greater skill and intensity than Hierony- 
mus Fabricius ab Aquapendente (1537-1619), a successor 
of Vesalius in the Chair at Padua; where he taught for 
over sixty years and where William Harvey (1578-1657) 


. . 
a a 
> : a ‘ 

ke ee PY iis te | die 


THE DARK AGES AND DAWN OF SCIENCE I0g 


was his pupil. Fabricius was one of the most successful 
and stimulating of medical teachers, and he added an 
enormous number of facts to the sum of anatomical and 
physiological knowledge. As an investigator, however, 
he lacked, like all his contemporaries, complete speculative 
freedom. For that the time was still hardly ripe, and his 
physiology was still largely Galenic. While he provided 
many of the observations on which the view of the circula- 
tion of the blood was built, his vision remained obscured 
by the traditional outlook. It was left to his great English 
pupil to enunciate the basic doctrine of modern physiology 
in the next century. The grasp of Galen was weakening, 
but it had not yet wholly relaxed. 3 

The mentality of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the greatest 
astronomer of the second half of the sixteenth century, was 
not dissimilar to that of Fabricius, its greatest anatomist. 
Tycho, like Fabricius, was a first-class observer, but, 
like him, weak and timid in drawing conclusions. By means 
of newly designed but simple apparatus employed with 
exquisite skill, ‘Tycho attained an unprecedented degree of 
accuracy in astronomical observation. His records were 
employed later by his colleague Johann Kepler (1571-1630). 
These observations aided Kepler to purge the Copernican 
hypothesis of the traditional notions concerning the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies in circles. The circles were 
replaced by ellipses and modern astronomy was born. 

The year 1600 is associated with two important events 
in the history of science, which mark it out as the final parting 
of the ways. In that year Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a 
profound student of the works of Nicholas of Cues and an 
ardent follower of Copernicus, suffered martyrdom at the 
stake. In that year William Gilbert (1540-1603) produced 
his work On the magnet, on magnetic bodies, and on the earth 
as a great magnet, a new physiography, demonstrated by many 
arguments and experiments. 'The work is the first great 


1 The word he uses is physiologia, which is best translated by our word 
phystography. 


110 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


scientific treatise published in England, but it is much more. 
It is a landmark in the history of science asa whole. Gilbert 
accepts fully the Copernican view of a heliocentric world, 
and he speculates fearlessly on observed conclusions. Above 


all, as the title of the work tells, his views are demonstrated - 


by arguments and experiments. It is a distinction of which 
he never loses sight, and he is careful to record exactly 
and by a special device his own personal experiences. ‘These 
are clearly separated from his arguments and from the 
experiences of others. The book has the form and spirit 
of a modern scientific treatise. | 

We have now left utterly behind the Middle Ages and 
all their works and ways. The old hypothesis of the 
macrocosm and microcosm was no longer possible to those 
who had studied and understood the works of Copernicus 
and Vesalius. Men no longer studied macrocosm and 
microcosm as such, but they became physicists or physiolo- 
gists, taking each of them a separated portion of the universe 


for special study. ‘This disposition to base opinion on — 


observation, involving separation of nature into depart- 
ments, characterizes the modern method and distinguishes 
it from the mediaeval. ‘The early morning twilight is over, 
the dawn is upon us and it was the risen sun that Harvey 
and Galileo saluted, and in the light of which Francis Bacon 
and Descartes did their prophesying. 


ut 
ts 

TL 
itt, 


att 
i mt 


Airs 


ANDREAE VESALII 
BRVXELLENSIS, SCHOLAB 
medicorum Parauinz profefloris,de 
Human corporis fabrica 

Libri feptem. 


Mae] Calbarum Acgorar Senarua ener gratia (7° 
Primslegie, wt in dipismatn gormadem contmetur 


—=— 


Fic. 46.—VESALIUS DISSECTING AT PADUA AMONG HIS 
STUDENTS 


From his De fabrica corporis humani of 1543. 


IIo] 


III 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON. 
A MAGICAL TEXT OF THE SIXTH CENTURY. 


§ 1. Title, Author, and Date p. III 
§ 2. Language : : p. 1f7 
§ 3. Text and Translation p. 122 
§ 4. Vocabulary . . : p. 127 
§ 5. Appendix on Manuscripts . D532 


§ 1. Title, Author, and Date 


TE word Lorica meant primarily a leather coat or cuirass 
and was used in this sense as early as Plautus (d. 184 B.c.). 
In later classical writings the term came to describe a hau- 
berk or byrnie of linked mail. A Lorica of this kind is 
described by Virgil :— 

Loricam consertam hamis auroque trilicem. 

A hauberk of linked mail and triple tissue of gold. 

AENEID, iii. 467, 


Mail coats of this kind were well known to the Celtic 
and T’eutonic tribes. Such a mail coat is carved, together 
with Runic writing, on a whalebone box of about A.D. 700 
in the British Museum, known as the ‘ Franks Casket ’ 
[Fig. 49], and a hringde byrnan is described in Beowulf 
(c. A.D. 700), where we read :— 


Béowulf madhelode—on him byrne sc4n, 
Searo-net seowed smithes or-thancum. 


Béowulf spake, the byrnie on him shone, 
_ The armour-net linked by the skill of the smith. 
BEOWULF, 405, 406, 


Loricae of this type have been recovered by excavation 
from Teutonic sites from Switzerland to Sweden, and it 


ey ee ee ee eee ‘a - 
a Mel oa 
ahd ot eee r. 


112 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


is evident that such armour was widely known in barbarian 
Europe [Figs. 47 and 48]. | 

The special liturgical use of the word Jorica is probably 
derived from passages in the Vulgate where St. Paul 
speaks of those who have ‘ put on the lorica of righteous- 
ness,’ induti loricam justitiae (Ephesians, vi, 14), or are 
‘covered with the lorica of faith and love,’ induti loricam — 
fidei et caritatis (I Thess. v. 8).1_ tn connexion with the 
later development of the idea of a lorica of prayer, the former 
of these passages may be considered in its context. 


Ephesians VI. 


Vulgate Version 


10. . . . Fratres confortamini in 
Domino, et in_ potentia 
virtutis ejus. 

11. Induti vos armaturam Dei, 
ut possitis stare adversus 
insidias diaboli. 


12. Quoniam non est nobis colluc- 


tatio adversus carnem et san- . 


guinem, sed adversus princi- 
pes, et potestates, adversus 
mundi rectores tenebrarum 
harum, contra _ spiritualia 
nequitiae, in caelestibus. 


13. Propterea accipite armaturam 
Dei, ut possitis resistere in 
die malo, et in omnibus 
perfecti stare. 


14. State ergo succincti lumbos 
vestros in veritate, et induti 
loricam justitiae ; 


15. Et calceati pedes in praepara- 
tione Evangelii pacis ; 


English Translation 


10. . . . Brethren, be ye strong in 
the Lord and in the power 
of His might. 

11. Put on yourselves the armour of — 
God that ye may be able to 
stand against the wiles of 
the devil. grate 

12. Since for us the struggle is not 
against flesh and blood but 
against principalities and 
powers, against the rulers of 
the world of this darkness, 
against the Church (spiri- — 
tualia) of wickedness in the 
heavens. ; 

13. Wherefore take up the armour of 
God, that ye -nay be able to 
withstand in the evil day 
and, being perfected in all 
things, to stand. 

14. Stand therefore having girded 
your loins with truth and 
having put on the lorica of 
righteousness ; 

15. And having feet shod with pre- 
paration of the gospel of peace ; 


‘1 In the original Greek the word translated lorica is Oépag in both 


cases. 


Fic. 48.—Detail of Fig. 47, show- 
ing arrangement of rings. 


Fic. 47.—Corslet or byrnie of iton rings. 
Vimose, Funen, Denmark 


Fic. 49.—ONE OF THE FACES OF THE SO-CALLED FRANKS 
CASKET 


This important relic is Northumbrian carving in whalebone of about A.p. 700. 

It was presented to the British Museum in 1857 by its Director, Sir A. Wollaston 

Franks (1826-97). The scene represents an attack on a walled house defended 

by a hero whose name EGIL] is inscribed above him in Runic letters. Atrows 

hurtle through the air and dead and dying lie about. ‘Two of the attackers weat 
Loricae of chain mail. 


112] 


4@ 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON II3 


16. In omnibus sumentes scutum 16. Above all taking up the shield 


fidei, in quo possitis omnia of faith with which ye may 
tela nequissimi ignea exstin- be able to extinguish all the 
guere. fiery darts of the most evil 
one. 
17. Et galeam salutis assumite, et 17. And take the helmet of salvation, 
gladium spiritus, quod est and the sword of the spirit, 
verbum Dei. which is the word of God. 


A similar range of ideas is encountered in Isaiah lix. 1% 
and in Psalm xci. In the former we read of one who ‘ has 
put on righteousness as a lorica and a helmet of salvation on 
his head,’ indutus est justitia ut lorica, et galea salutis in 
capite gus. It is interesting also to observe that Psalm xci 
is treated in Rabbinic literature as a protection against 
demoniac foes and against disease, and is used in much 
the same way as the lorica that we here describe. 

In early Christian Europe the devotee regarded himself as 
surrounded constantly by devils who were always thrusting 
at him and endeavouring to pierce his breast-plate of good 
deeds and Christian observance. It became an ecclesiastical 
commonplace to speak of those protected from such attacks 
by a life of devotion, chastity, and asceticism as loricati. 
Thus the demon- and sin-repelling apparatus of prayer and 
mortification was conventionally looked upon as itself a lorica. 

This feature is well brought out in the Irish hymn attri- 
buted to Bishop Sanctan, an early saint of Welsh origin, 
which begs that :— 


To my soul for every black sin 
Let never demons’ godlessness visit me. 


I shall utter the praises of Mary’s Son 
Who fights for good deeds. 

And God of the elements will reply, 
For MY TONGUE Is A LorIca for battle. 
In beseeching God from the heavens 
May my body be incessantly laborious 
That I may not come to horrible Hell. 


‘ Printed and translated by J. H. Bernard and R. Atkinson, The Irish 
Liber Hymnorum, London, 1898, i, p. 129, and ii, p. 47. 
8 


bee Mn ra 


\ 


IIt4 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Certain prayers regarded as of special efficacy, to which 
the name of some well-known and much tried saint was 
sometimes attached, came thus to be called loricae. In 
Ireland a special lorical value was attached to the prayers of 
St. Patrick ; thus in an early Irish poem in praise of him 
we read that ‘a hymn which thou hast chosen in thy life- 
time shall be a Lorica of protection to all.’ } 
The most famous of all the loricae is indeed that which 
claims to have been written by St. Patrick himself. Whether 
the claim is just or no, the composition is certainly very 
ancient and perhaps dates back to the fifth or sixth century, ; 
since it was written in a period when paganism had still 
considerable influence. The ‘ Lorica of St. Patrick,’ the q 
faeth fiada or ‘ cry of the deer ’ as it is called,’ betrays its , 
early origin by the call for protection ‘ against incantations . 
of false prophets ; against black laws of paganism .. . | 
against deceit of idolatry and against spells of women, 
smiths and druids.’ In the first lines of this text we read : 
how ‘ Patrick made this hymn . . . for the protection of 
himself and his monks against the enemies that lay in ambush | 
for the clerics. And it is a Lorica of faith for the protection . 
of body and soul against demons and men and vices. When 
any person shall recite it daily with pious meditation on 
God, demons shall not dare to face him, it shall be a protec- 
tion to him against all poison and envy, it shall be a guard 
to him against sudden death ; it shall be a Lorica for his 
soul after his decease.’ The Lorica which bears the name 
of Gillus or Gildas, which we here discuss, is of a somewhat 
similar type and designed for a like purpose to that of 
Patrick, which it closely resembles in tone and style. 


; 
‘ 
‘ 
: 
} 
§ 
’ 


1 Bernard and Atkinson, Joc. cit., i. p. 133, and ii, p. 49. The inter- 
pretation of the term fdeth fiada is disputed. Some would read it feth 
fiada and consider that it was a spell peculiar to Druids and poets who 
by pronouncing certain verses of the hymn could make themselves invisible. F 
The point is one that only Celtic scholars can decide. See Hugh Williams, : 
Gildae de excidio Britanniae (Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion), 2 vols., London, 
1899, ii, p. 292. | 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON II5 


The earliest copy of the Gildan Lorica that can be dated 
with any accuracy is a Cambridge manuscript of Anglo- 
Saxon workmanship. This manuscript has been recognized 
on palaeographical grounds as a product of the ninth cen- 
tury, while its date can be more narrowly determined by its 
acrostic containing the name Aedeluald Episcopus2 This 
Aedeluald or Aethelwald was Bishop of Lichfield between 
818 and 830. But the composition of the Lorica is anterior 
to the earlier of these dates, since it is clearly Celtic in origin 
and character, and there was no direct Celtic influence on 
the liturgy of the English Church during the ninth century. 
The Welsh frontier had been flung back across the Severn 
fifty miles and more from the seat of his bishopric well-nigh 
two centuries before Aethelwald occupied it, so that by the 
eighth century Mercia was politically cut off from Wales. 
To separative political elements must be added the odium 
resulting from the schismatic character of the British Church 
after the Council of Whitby (664), reflected even in the 
writings of so gentle a soul as Bede (672-735). Thus to 
explain the Celtic source of the Lorica and to reach a 
point when a Mercian would have adopted a prayer of 
British origin, we must certainly look further back than 
the days of Aethelwald, and at least to the seventh 
century. 

There is, moreover, external literary evidence that the 
composition of the Lorica was anterior to the eighth century. 
Aldhelm of Malmesbury (died 709) appears to have known 
of it, and his peculiar expression tuta pelta protegente is a 
reminiscence of stanza 162 F urther, all the MSS., except 
that at Vienna, associate the Lorica with one Laidcend, 
Loding, or Lodgen. The Leabhar Breac or Speckled Book, 
a work of the fourteenth century, speaks of the prayer as 
introduced into Ireland by Laidcend, son of Baeth the 
Victorious. This Laidcend, according to the Irish annals, 

* The entire document is printed by A. B. Kuypers, The Book of Cerne, 


Cambridge, 1902. 
* F. J. H. Jenkinson, The Hisperica Famina, Cambridge, 1908, p. xxii. 


116 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


died in 661, and if the Laidcend of the Leabhar Breac is 
the same as Lodgen or Loding the prayer must be earlier 
than this date. 

The opening sentence of the Leabhar Breac tells us that 
‘Gillus composed this Lorica to expel the demons who 
beset him.’ It has been suggested that this Gillus is identical 
with Gildas the ‘ British Jeremiah.’ Gildas Badonicus, the 
earliest British historian, was born in 516, the year of the 
battle of Mount Badon, and died about 570. Géillus or 
Gillas is known to be a common form of Gildas, especially 
in Irish documents. His well-known history, De excidio 
Britanniae, was written about 560, and a date about the 
middle of the sixth century must be ascribed to the Lorica 
if it is from his hand. The evidence that the work is by 
this Gildas is however by no means conclusive. It may 
well be that it dates from the century in which he lived, to 
which period other specimens of Hibernian Latin have been 
attributed,’ though it is probable that most of them are at 
least a century later. If Gildas Badonicus were really 
the author we could regard the mortalitas huius anni, referred 
to in the text, as the yellow plague, which is said to have 
ravaged Britain about 547, at which date the composition 
of the Lorica would then be approximately fixed? A 
more likely date for our document is perhaps about 600, 
and it is probably the work of a British Gildas other than 
he of Badon. 


1 The view that the Lorica is of the sixth century, and the work of 
Gildas, is upheld by H. Zimmer, Nennius Vindicatus, Berlin, 1893. It 
is regarded as of the seventh century (circ. 660) by R. Thurneysen in Zeit. 
f. deutsch Philologie, xxviii. p. 111, and by Hugh Williams, Gildas, London, 
1889-1901, p. 295, and Christianity in Early Britain, Oxford, 1912. There 
is general consent that it is not later than the seventh century. 

2 The dates of this plague lie between 543 and 548. The oceurrence 
of this plague is doubted by C. Creighton, A History of Epidemics in Britain, 
Cambridge, 1912, 2 vols., i. p. 4. It is thought that the story may have 
arisen as a rumour of the great plague at Byzantium and elsewhere in 
543 and subsequent years. Cf. O’Donovan, Annals of the Four Masters, 
Dublin, 1851, i. p. 183. 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON 117 


§ 2. Language. 


The language of the Lorica of Gildas has attracted a great 
deal of attention. The difficulty presented by mediaeval 
Latin is usually in the vocabulary, and is seldom construc- 
tional. To this rule the Lorica is no exception, for, with a 
very simple structure, it presents a most extraordinary 
collection of out-of-the-way and exotic words.’ The lan- 
guage of the Lorica has been much studied in connexion 
with the Hisperica Famina,a curious document of the seventh 
century in the Vienna Library, which the Lorica in many 
ways resembles. 

A similar specimen of the so-called ‘ Hibernian’ or 
‘ Hisperic ’ Latin is encountered in a hymn attributed to 
St. Columba (died 597), known from its opening words 
as Altus prosator ‘The earliest manuscript of this composi- 
tion is of the eleventh century, but there can be no doubt 
that it was composed at a far earlier date. 

The Altus prosator also, we are assured, renders the 
reciter thereof secure fromall manner of spiritual destruction, 
and further ° protects against every death save death on the 
pillow.’ 

Another early fragment of Celtic origin, the ‘ Leyden 


' The text of the Hisperica Famina is accessible in Migne’s Patrologia 
Latina, xc, p. 1186. Important discussions containing the bibliography 
of the text will be found in H. Bradshaw, Collected Papers, Cambridge, 
1889, p. 453 (reprinted from a publication of 1872), and by H. Zimmer, 
Nennius Vindicatus, Uber Entstehung, Geschichte und Quellen der Historia 
Brittonum, Berlin, 1893, and in the Nachrichten von d. Konigl. Ges. der 
Wissenschaften zu Géttingen, 1895, Heft ii. Another curious specimen 
containing many of the ‘ Hisperic’ words of the Lorica is encountered 
in the Luxemburg folio transcribed by J. Rhys, Revue celtique, i, p. 346, 
Paris, 1871. An excellent review of Hisperic or Hibernian Latin texts is 
given by H. Williams, loc. cit., pp. 298 ff. Lastly, the text of the Hisperica 
Famina has been critically edited and compared with other specimens of 
Hibernian Latin by F. J. H. Jenkinson, The Hisperica Famina, Cambridge, 
1908. 

* Reprinted by Bernard and Atkinson, Joc. cit., i. p. 62; ii, pp. 23 
and 140. 


118 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Lorica,’ enumerates the parts of the body in great detail, 
in the same way as does the Lorica of Gildas, and uses much 
of the same obscure vocabulary. The Leyden Lorica is, 
on the whole, however, much simpler and less interesting 
than is the Gildan document. 

Modern research shows that the earlier stages of the 
process by which the Anglo-Saxon replaced the British 
tribes was one of infiltration and penetration rather than 
of invasion, conquest, and extermination, although doubt- 
less both elements were present. On this view we should 
expect to find connecting links between the Anglo-Saxon 
and the Celtic languages, yet such links are extraordinarily 
difficult to trace, and the classical Anglo-Saxon tongue— 
early literary English—contains even fewer Celtic words 
than does modern English. Such Celtic remains as are 
to be discovered in Anglo-Saxon documents must be 
sought either in Hisperic texts and their glosses or in 
other magical formulae. To find any real connexion be- 
tween the two languages, if any such ever existed, we 
should probably need to look much further back than the 
formed literary English of which the best examples are of 
the tenth century, beyond the Danish devastation of the 
ninth century, beyond the racial bitterness of the eighth, 
beyond the schism of the seventh century, perhaps even 
beyond the Roman missionary effort of the sixth century 
under Augustine of Canterbury. Documentary material 
of this order is, however, wholly lacking. 

Now although the race and language movement was 
always westward, yet the cultural advantage for centuries 
was, as is well known, on the side of the receding peoples. 
The Celtic and English idioms are so vastly different that 
then, as now, little mixture of the two can have taken place, 
but there was a cultural diffusion in an eastward direction 
which is traceable in written documents. A small amount 
of Celtic magic and folklore spread among men of English 


1 V.H. Friedel, ‘ La Lorica de Leyde,’ in the Zeit. f. celtische Philologie, 


1898, ii. p. 64. 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON II9g 


speech, carrying its characteristic ideas with it. Of this 
influence the ‘ Leechdoms’ give evidence in several places. 
To the Anglo-Saxon clerics, who shared a knowledge of 
Latin with their Celtic colleagues, there was, however, an 
easy and natural means of communication, and of this 
interchange the Lorica of Gildas is a very early monument. 
It is written in that very characteristic form of Latin, 
known as ‘ Hisperic’ or ‘ Hibernian,’ that was affected in 
south-west Britain and Ireland in the sixth and seventh 
centuries. Considerable remnants of what must have been 
an extensive Hisperic literature have now been recovered. 
In this surviving Hisperic literature the Lorica of Gildas 
stands almost alone in that, while thoroughly Celtic in 
tone and style, and in use moreover by both the Irish 
and Welsh, it was yet popular with the English. This 
curious fact is sufficiently proved by the existence of 
three copies of the Lorica of Anglo-Saxon workmanship, 
two of them fully glossed in the Anglo-Saxon language. 
The Gildan Lorica is thus perhaps the earliest surviving 
literary link between the two rival cultures and_ rival 
tongues. 

That the Lorica of Gildas was not the only specimen of 
Hisperic Latin that had reached the Saxon monasteries we 
learn from the occurrence of difficult words from other 
Hisperic documents in Anglo-Saxon vocabularies from the 
eighth to the eleventh centuries, and occasionally in the 
writings of Aldhelm (died 709). Through the medium of 
these glosses and vocabularies the combined efforts of 
mediaevalists, and Greek, Semitic, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon 
scholars have now extracted the meaning and source of a 
_ great number of these obscureterms. There are also several 
passages in the Leechdoms which must have been written 


1 A readable account of the literature of Hibernian Latin is contained 
in the article on the Celtic Church, by H. Zimmer, in the Realencyclopddie 
f. prot. Theologie und Kunst, and has been conveniently translated into 
English by A. Meyer as The Celtic Church in Britain Ireland, and London, 
1902. 


I20 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


under Hisperic influence.1 One of the most surprising 
things about the Hisperic vocabulary is the occurrence of 
Semitic elements. 

It is not easy to understand how a knowledge of 
Hebrew sufficient to suggest to its author some of the 
out-of-the-way words included in the Lorica of Gildas can 
have reached Britain in the sixth or seventh century? 
Modern study of the Hisperic Latin literature has reduced 
the number of words to which a Semitic source was 
ascribed by the earlier investigators. There still remains, 
however, a small group which appear to be truly of Semitic 
origin, and cannot be otherwise explained. Prominent 
among these are 7duma =O" =hands; gibrae = 133 = 
man; and senas =} = tooth. While the source of such 
words cannot yet be fully explained, there are certain 
points in connexion with this peculiar Semitic relationship 
that may be borne in mind. 

(a) From an early date interest in the works of Jerome 
attracted attention to the words of Hebrew origin used by 
him, and information as to the meaning of these and, 
perhaps, of other Hebrew words thus reached these shores. 
Two very early vocabularies of Anglo-Saxon origin contain 
a considerable proportion of Hebrew words.? Bede had a 
vestigial knowledge of Hebrew. 

1 These are to be found in vol. i. p. 386 and pp. 388-90; vol. ii. 
p. 112 and pp. 348-50; vol. iu. p. 26, p. 78, pp. 288-90, and p. 294 of 
O. Cockayne’s Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, 
3 vols., London, 1864-6. 

2 A Gallican psalter with Hebrew equivalents dating from the tenth 
century has also been described, F. E. Warren, ‘ Un Monument inédit de 
la Liturgie Celtique,’ Paris, 1888, Revue Celtique, ix. p. 88. It may have 
been from some source such as this that Bede derived his slight 


knowledge of Hebrew. The question of Hebrew alphabets in early 
Latin manuscripts is discussed by the author in The Legacy of Israel, Oxford, 
1927, Pp. 290. 

8 J. H. Hessels, ‘An Eighth Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary ’ 
(The Corpus Glossary), Cambridge, 1890, p. 3; and ‘A Late Eighth 
Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary ’ (The Leyden Glossary), Cambridge, 
1906, pp. 27 and 221. 


f 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON 121 


(5) It is possible that writers of Hibernian Latin may have 
had direct access to Jewish sources. No evidence is forth- 
coming that there were Jews in England before the Con- 
quest, but there are ample records of their presence in Gaul. 

(c) Recent research has demonstrated unexpectedly early 
Arabian influence in southern Gaul beginning not later 
than the early part of the eighth century 2 

(d) Syriac influence has been traced also in the Lorican 
vocabulary. From an early date Syrian wanderers, travell- 
ing for trade purpose, had reached the West. Thus a 
Spanish work on Technology of about the year 700 contains 
many Syriac terms. Again, Gregory of Tours (538-94), 
who was contemporary with the supposed date of our 
Lorica, tells that he learned the story of the Seven Sleepers 
of Ephesus from the mouth of a Syrian? The same writer 
preserves also the Syrian legend of Cosmas and Damian 4 
Syrian influence in art was also prominent. 

Such knowledge of Greek, on the other hand, as the 
Lorica displays, in common with other specimens of Hisperic 
Latin, was no very unusual accomplishment in Ireland from 
a date as far back as the fifth century.’ This knowledge, 


1S. A. Hirsch, Trans. fewish Historical Soc. Eng., London, 1915, vii. 
pp. 3 and 4. Gregory of Tours has many references to Jews in his History 
of the Franks. References to Jews in France have been collected by 
H. Gross, Gallia Judaica, Paris, 1897. 

* Leo Wiener, History of the Arabico-Gothic Culture, New York, 2 vols., 
1917. The conclusions in this work are generally unsound, but the 
important chapter on Virgilius Maro contains valuable material that has 
been commented on by H. Bradley in the English Historical Review, 
London, 1918, xxxiii. p. 252. 

* Gregory of Tours, De gloria martyrum, ch. xcv. 

* Charles and Dorothea Singer, ‘ Miniature of an Operation of Cosmas 
and Damian,’ Osler Presentation Volume, New York, 1919. 

* Ludwig Traube, ‘O Roma nobilis’ (Philologische Untersuchungen aus 
den Mittelalter, Munich, 1891). See also K. Meyer, Learning in Ireland 
in the Fifth Century and the Transmission of Letters, Dublin, 1913. A 
popular account of the part played by Irishmen in the spread of learning 
during the Middle Ages is given in The Irish Element in Mediaeval Culture, 
by H. Zimmer, translated by J. E. Edmunds, New York, 1891. 


122 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


the extent of which has been often exaggerated, may have 
reached the island from southern Gaul, where, as we know 
from Apollinaris Sidonius (430-87), Greek was well-known 


in the fifth century. The special magic value attached 


to the Lorica of Gildas, alike by the Celtic and English 
speaking peoples, arose perhaps from this mysterious and 
exotic character of its phraseology. 


§ 3. 


The text of the Lorica is found in six manuscripts of 
which the earliest is of the eighth century. These manu- 
scripts we designate by the latters of the alphabet A to F. 
They are enumerated in the appendix to this essay. Our 
version is taken mainly from B with readings from other 
manuscripts. One of the manuscripts has been glossed 
in the Kentish dialect of Anglo-Saxon, a second in West 
Saxon, and a third in Irish. These glosses help greatly 
in the interpretation of the numerous very peculiar words. 
The text combines its magical elements with a sort of 
anatomical list. 'This list betrays, in places, contact with 
classical science in the last stage of degeneration. 


Text and Translation 


Gillus hanc loricam fecit ad 
demones_ expellendos, eos qui 
aduersauerunt illi. 

Peruenit angelus ad illum, et 
dixit illi angelus: Si quis homo 
frequentauerit illam addetur ei 
seculum septim annis et tertia 
pars peccatorum delebitur. In 
quacumque die cantauerit hanc 
orationem ... es, homines uel 
demones, et inimici non possunt 
nocere; et mors in illo die non 
tengit. Laidcend mac Buith Ban- 
naig uenit ab eo in insolam Hiber- 
niam ; transtulit et portauit super 
altare sancti Patricii episcopi, saluos 
nos facere, amen. 


Gildas made this lorica to drive 
out those demons who pestered 
him. , 

An angel came to him, and the 
angel said to him, ‘If any man 
should recite it constantly, a period 
of seven years would be added to 
his life and a third part of his sins 
blotted out. On whatsoever day he 
should chant this prayer . . . men, 
demons, or enemies cannot harm 
him, nor death touch him on that 
day.’ Laidcend, son of Baeth the 
Victorious, came from him to the 
island of Ireland; he brought it 
over and placed it upon the altar 
of Saint Patrick the Bishop, to 
make us whole. Amen. 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON 


Metrum undecassillabum quod 
et bracicatelecticon dicitur quod 
undecem sillabis constant; sic 
scanditur.! 


1. Suffragare trinitatis? unitas 
unitatis miserere trinitas 
2. Suffragare quaeso mihi posito 


maris magni uelut in periculo 
3. Ut non secum trahat me mor- 
talitas 
huius anni neque mundi uani- 
tas 
4. Et hoc idem peto a sublimibus 
celestis militiae uirtutibus 
5. Ne me linquant lacerandum 
hostibus 
sed defendant me iam armis 
fortibus 
6. Ut me illi praecedant in acie 


caelestis exercitus militiae 
7. Cherubinn et seraphinn cum 
milibus 
Michael et Gabrihel similibus 


8. Opto tronos uirtutes* arch- 
angelos 
principatus potestates angelos 
g. Ut me denso defendentes 
agmine 
inimicos ualeam prosternere 


10. Tum deinde ceteros agonithetas 
patriarchas quattuor quater pro- 
phetas 


123 


The metre is hendecasyllabic and 
is also called brachycatalectic be- 
cause it consists of eleven syllables. 
It is scanned thus :— 


Help, O oneness of Trinity, 

have pity, O threeness of unity, 

I beseech thee to help me who am 
placed 

in peril as of a mighty sea, 

So that neither the pestilence of 
this year 

nor the vanity of the world may 
suck me under. 

And this I beg from the might 

of the power of the high heavens ; 

that they may not leave me to be 
torn by foes, 

but may defend me with their 
mighty arms ; 

that they may stand before me in 
battle array 

as the army of heaven’s levy. 

Cherubim and Seraphim with their 
thousands, 

Michael and Gabriel and _ their 
like, 

I conjure the thrones, the virtues, 
the archangels, 

the principalities, powers and angels 

that, shielding me in dense forma- 
tion, 

I may stand strong to strike down 
the enemy. 

(I beg) then the other chieftains, 

the patriarchs and the four times 
four prophets, 


1 This introduction is inserted from E; B has Hanc luricam lodgen 


in anno periculoso constituit. 


Et alii dicunt magna sit uirtus eius. Si 


ter in die cantatur. A has only Hanc luricam loding cantauit ter in 


omne die. 
2 B reads trinitas. 
3 A reads inuentes. 


Our reading is inserted from E. 
B reads uiuentes. 


Uirtutes is inserted from E. 


124 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


11. Et apostolos nauis Christi pro- 
retas 
et martyres omnes peto anth- 
letas 
12. Atque adiuro et uirgines omnes 
uiduas fideles et confessores! 
13. Ut me per illos salus sepiat 


atque omne malum a me pereat 


14. Christus mecum pactum firmum 
fereat 

timor tremor 
terreat. 

Finit primus prologus graduum 
angelorum et patriarchum 
apostolorum et martirum 
cum Christo. 

Incipit prologus secundus de 
cunctis membris corporis 
usque ad genua.? 

15. Deus inpenetrabili tutella 
undique me defende potentia 
16, Meae gibrae pernas omnes 
libera 

tuta® pelta protegente singula 

17. Ut non tetri demones in latera 
mea librent ut soleant iacula 
18. Gigram cephale cum iaris et 


tetras turbas 


conas 
pattham liganam sennas atque 
michinas 
19. Cladum crassum madianum 
talias 
bathma exugiam atque binas 
idumas 


20. Meo ergo cum capillis uertice 4 
galea salutis esto capite 


and I beg the Apostles, the pilots of 
the ship of Christ, 

the martyrs, yea, all of them cap- 
tains, 

and I adjure also all virgins, 

faithful widows and confessors, 

that for their sake salvation may 
circle me 

and all evil may perish from before 
me, 

that Christ may make a strong 
alliance with me 

that terror and fear may affright the 
foul host. 

Here ends the first prologue of the 
degrees of angels and patriarchs, 
of apostles and martyrs with 
Christ. 

Here begins the second prologue 
concerning all the members of the 
body as far as the knees. 

O God, with thy inscrutable 
saving power defend all my parts, 
deliver the whole trunk of my body 
with thine own protecting shield 
that foul demons may not hurl, 
as is their wont, their darts at my 
flanks, 
skull, head with hair and eyes, 


forehead, tongue, teeth and nose, 
neck, breast, side and reins, 
thighs, under-rump and two hands. 


To my head, with hairs on top of it, 
be a helmet of protection, 


1 The whole stanza 12 is omitted by A and B but found in E. 
2 The two clauses between stanzas 14 and 15 are omitted by A and B 


and inserted from E. 
3 A and E read tuta, B tua. 
‘ A reads capiti, as also E. 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON 125 


21. Fronti oculis et cerebro triformi 
rostro labie facie timpore 
22. Mento barbae superciliis auri- 
bus 
genis buccis internaso naribus 


23. Pupillis rotis palpebris tautoni- 
bus 
gingis anile } maxillis faucibus 
24. Dentibus linguae ori uuae? gut- 
tori 
gurgulioni et sublinguae ceruici 


25. Capitali ceotro cartilagini 
collo clemens adesto tutamini 


[Obsecro te domine Iesu Christe 
propter nouem ordines 
sanctorum angelorum.*] 

26. Deinde esto LORICA tutissima 
ergo membra ergo mea uiscera‘ 


27. Ut retrudas a me inuisibiles 


sudum clauos quos fingunt 
odibiles 
28. Tege ergo Deus fortis lurica 
cum  scapulis humeros_ et 
brachia 
29. Tege ulnas cum cubis et mani- 
bus 
pugnos palmas digitos cum 
ungibus 
30. ‘Tege spinam atque costas cum 
arctibus 
terga dorsumque neruos cum 
ossibus 


to forehead, eyes and triformed 
brain, 
to nose, lip, face and temple, 


to chin, beard, eyebrows, ears, 

cheeks, lips, internasal septum and 
nares, 

to the round pupils, eyelids and eye- 
lashes, 

gums, breath, jaws, fauces, 

to the teeth, tongue, mouth and 
throat, 

uvula, larynx and frenum of the 
tongue, 

to head-pan, brain and gristle, 

and to my neck be thou a protec- 
tion in thy mercy ; 

[I beseech thee, O Lord Jesus 
Christ, 

for the nine orders of holy angels, 

Be thou a secure lorica 

both to my members and to my 
viscera. 

So that thou turn back from me 
the invisible 

points of the shafts which transfix 
the abhorred. 

Cover (me) then, O God, Thou 
strong lorica, 

as to my shoulders, arms and fore- 
arms ; 

Cover arms with elbows and hands, 


fists, palms, fingers with nails. 


Cover the spine and ribs with their 
joints, 

the rear and back with nerves and 
bones. 


1 Breads Anale. The reading anile is inserted from A. 

2 B reads ubae only. The reading ori uuae is inserted from A. 
’ This invocation is absent in A and B and is inserted from E. 
4 The order of membra and uiscera is inverted in B. 


126 


31. Tege cutem sanguinem cum 
renibus 
cata crines nates cum femori- 
bus 
32. Tege cambas surras femoralia 
cum genuclis po(p)lites et 


genua 
33. Tege ramos con crescentes 
decies 
cum mentagris ungues! binos 
quinquies 
34. Tege talos cum tibiis et calci- 
bus 
crura pedes plantarum cum 
bassibus. 
35. Tege pectus iugulam pectuscu- 
lum 
mamillas* stomachum et um- 
bilicum 


-36. Tege uentrem lumbos genetalia 
et aluum et cordis uitalia 


Tege trifidum iecor et ilia 
marsem reniculos fithrem cum 
obligio 


37: 


38. Tege toliam toracem cum pul- 
mone 
uenas fibras fel cum bucliamini 


39. Tege carnem inginem? cum 
medullis 
splenem tortuosis intestinis 
Tege uesicam adipem et pantes* 
compaginum innumeros ordines 
41. Tege pilos atque membra reli- 
qua 
quorum forte praeteribi nomina 


40. 


FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Cover skin, blood with kidneys, 
haunches and rump with thighs. 


Cover hams, calves and thigh parts 

with knuckle-bones, poplites and 
knees. 

Cover the tenfold branches (of the 
fingers) 

with toes and their twice five nails, 


Cover ankles with shanks and heels, 

legs, feet, soles with insteps. 

Cover breast, peritoneum and breast 
bone, 


mammae, stomach and navel. 


Cover belly, groins, genital parts 


and paunch and vital parts of the — 


heart. 
Cover the trifid liver and ilia, 


scrotum, kidneys, intestines and 
rete mirabile. 
Cover tonsils, thorax with lung, 


vessels, sinews, gall with pericar- 
dium. 
Cover flesh, groin with marrow, 


spleen with tortuous intestines. 
Cover bladder fat and all 

the innumerable sorts of structures. 
Cover hairs and the other members 


the names of which I have per- 
chance omitted. 


’ B has iunges. The reading ungues is from A. 

* Bhas mamellum. The reading mamillas is from A and E. 

* B has iunginam, as also A. The reading inginem is from E. 
‘ B has partes. The reading pantes is from A and E. 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON 


42. Tege totum me cum quinque 
sensibus 
et cum decim fabrefactis fori- 
bus 
43. Uta plantis usque ad verticem 


nullo membro foris intus egro- 
tem 
44 Ne de meo possit uitam trudere 
pestis febris languor dolor cor- 
pore | 
45. Donec iam Deo dante seneam 
et peccata mea bonis deleam 


46. Et de carne iens imis caream 


et ad alta euolare ualeam 
47. Et miserto! Deo ad etheria 


laetus regni uechar refrigeria 


127 


Cover all of me with my five senses, 


and with the ten doors that were 
contrived (for their use,) 

that from the soles to the top of the 
head 

in no member, without or within, 
may I be sick ; 

that there may not thrust the life 
from my body 

neither pest nor fever nor languor 
nor pain, 

while by God’s grace I may reach 
old age 

and may wipe out my sins with 
good deeds, 

And leaving the flesh I may be 
blameless 

and may be worthy to pass on high 

And by God’s pity I may rise 
happy 

to the refreshing ether of His King- 
dom. 


Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. 


§ 4. Vocabulary 


The chief interest of the Lorica of Gildas is the very 
extraordinary vocabulary of foreign words. The origin 
of many of these is still very obscure. In the following 
notes we give interpretations of most of them. There 
are still some on which scholars are by no means agreed. 
The capital letters refer to the manuscripts enumerated 
in the list at the end of this essay. A glance at the notes 
which follow here will give an idea of how, at certain 
cultural stages, any phrase or idea that is foreign or strange 
can be enlisted by the magician for his purposes. 


Stanza 10. Agonithetas from dywvioris = combatant. A has the 
Anglo-Saxon gloss cempan = chieftains. E contains a long gloss 
on this word, which yields the same result as A. 


1 B has misero. The reading miserto is from A and E. 


128 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


~ Stanza 11. Proretas must be for tpwpdtas = look-out men. A is glossed 
Anglo-Saxon stioran from steorra=a star. Steor-refra = steers- 
man occurs in the Blickling homilies (late tenth century): Crist 
wes on dhem scipe swa se steorrethra = Christ was in the ship as a 
steersman. E has a long gloss on the word, deriving it from Latin 
prora = the helm. 

Anthletas for 46dntds = champions. A is glossed Anglo-Saxon 
cempan = chieftains. E principes belli. 

Stanza 16. Gibrae, a suggested origin is Hebrew 124 = man, homo. 
A glosses Anglo-Saxon lichoman. Lic and lichama are recognized 
Anglo-Saxon forms for body or corpse, cf. German leichnam. E 
glosses id est hominis, gibre. 

Pernas appears to be equivalent to flank or trunk; as such it appears 
in an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon glossary thus: perna, flicci = 
fitch. 

E glosses id est artus id est compur inchleib. The Irish words 
= trunk (?) of the chest, according to Stokes. 

Pelta probably for réArn = shield. E glosses Irish sciath = shield. 

Stanza 17. Tetri for taetri. 

Stanza 18. Gigram is glossed by A as Anglo-Saxon hnoll = crown of 
the head, and by E with Irish words of the same significance. The 
origin of the word gigram is unknown. Cockayne’s suggestion is 
“aa, neck (rather N33). Gigram might also be fancifully ren- 
dered high top (DD 44). 

Cephale for xebddnv = head. 

Taris. W. Wright suggests this word is from Ww = hair as by error 
for siaris. ‘The connexion seems distant, but E glosses capillis. 

Conas. Cockayne’s suggestion for }’) = eyes, giving the full guttural 
sound to the yy, seems very strained. That conas means eyes seems 
clear from the fact that E is glossed oculos and D Anglo-Saxon 
egan = eyes. Conas is glossed oculos in another tenth-century 
MS. (Wright, vol. i), 

Pattham is shown by Irish gloss to E to mean forehead. For a source 
of the word the commentators are driven to Syriac. A glosses 
Anglo-Saxon onwlite = face. 

Liganam is glossed by E Irish dontengaid = to the tongue. The word 
must therefore stand for linguam. 

Sennas is glossed by A Anglo- Saxon toef = teeth, and by E dentes. 
Cockayne suggests from 1 = tooth. 


' Thomas Wright, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, edited a 
by R. P. Wiilker, 2 vols., London, 1884, i. 38, 34. 


© pee i 
ad 
ee) 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON 129 


Michinas is glossed by A as Anglo-Saxon nezsdhyrel = nostrils. A 
connexion has been suggested with pouxrjpas = nostrils. E glosses 
with the Irish equivalent of teeth. 


Stanza 19. Cladum glossed by A as Anglo-Saxon swiran and swioran = 
sweoro, neck or column. E glosses collum. For a source W. Wright 
is again driven to Syriac or Arabic ; Arabic kadhalun, Syriac kedala ; 
D reads chaladum. 

Crassum glossed by A as Anglo-Saxon breost and by E pectus. There 
can therefore be little doubt of its meaning, though no likely suggestion 
has been made for its source. Crassum is glossed dorsum in a tenth- 
century MS. (Wright). 

Madianu glossed by A sidan =side and by E latus. 

Lalas glossed by A as Anglo-Saxon lendana = lendenu = Joins, reins, 
and by E with the Irish equivalent of bowels. 

Bathma glossed by A as Anglo-Saxon dheeoh = thews or thighs, and 
by E with the Irish equivalent of Joins. Bathma is perhaps from 
Bobo = steps, a word which there is evidence from Hesychius 
Lexicographus (probably fifth century) was used as an out-of-the-way 
term for thighs as BaOpoi ixvyn wé8es = thighs, legs, feet. 

Exugiam glossed meaninglessly by A as Anglo-Saxon midirnan and by 
D as Anglo-Saxon micgernu. Micge is the usual Anglo-Saxon for 
urine and micgernu the place of the urine, i.e. the bladder. To regard 
it as equal to kidneys, as some have done, is to attribute to the author 
of the Lorica a physiological conception that he probably did not 
possess. For him it is probable that the kidneys would have been 
the seat of some mental rather than urinary function. The Irish 
gloss gives tarb gliasta no fathdéin, i.e. the bull (i.e. the thick part as 
opposed to the calf, the thin part) of the thigh, ie. the rump or 
under-rump. In Wiilcker the word exigia is glossed Anglo-Saxon 
gescinco which is surely a collective of sceanca = shank. The agree- 
ment of Anglo-Saxon and Irish glosses in this and other places indi- 
cates a definite harmony of interpretation that can only have been 
reached by direct intercourse. 

Idumas glossed by A as Anglo-Saxon hondas = hands, and by 
Emanus. The word itself is probably from DY’ = hands. 


Stanza 21. Timpus is the usual mediaeval form of tempus. 


Stanza 23. Tautonibus glossed by A as Anglo-Saxon ofer bruun = 
upper brows = eyebrows, and by E with the Irish equivalent of 
eyelids, the eyebrows being considered the guardians (tutores) of 
the eyes ; or perhaps the bony orbit of the skull is meant, cf. Aelfric 
vocabulary Tauco (? for Tauto), hringban dhes eagen = ring-bone 
of the eye. 


9 


ya 8 Se a ee 


130 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Gingis glossed by A todhreomum = tooth-holder. D reads ignis, 
but gives the same gloss. The word is probably for gingivis and 
not a form of Anglo-Saxon cin = chin, 

Anile glossed by A orodhe = breath = anhelae. 

Stanza 24. Uuae glossed by A Anglo-Saxon hrectungan = throat tongue 
= uvula. 

Gurgulioni glossed by A Anglo-Saxon dhrotbollan = throat pan = 
Adam’s apple = larynx. E agrees with this. 

Sublinguae glossed by A Anglo-Saxon tungedhrum = tongue thread or 
tongue cord = under tongue cord. D has Anglo-Saxon undertunge- 
dhrum. The meaning is surely the frenulum linguae of anatomists. 

Stanza 25. Capitali glossed by A Anglo-Saxon heafudponnan = head 
pan; by D Anglo-Saxon heafodlocan = head guard, head cover. 

Ceotro: A reads centro and glosses Anglo-Saxon swiran = neck, D 
reads ceotro; E reads ceotro and glosses with Irish equivalent of 
neck. Cockayne suggests from xévdpos, but an eighth-century gloss 
reads ceruellum, id est centrum bregen = brain, and this may well 
be the meaning. © 

Cartilagini glossed by A Anglo-Saxon gristlan. 

Stanza 27. Sudum for sudium. 

Stanza 29. Cubis glossed by A Anglo-Saxon fedhmum = elbow, 
arms; by D Anglo-Saxon elnbogan = elbows. 

Pugnos glossed fyste = fist by both A and D. 

Ungibus glossed naeglum = nails by both A and D. 

Stanza 30. Arctibus glossed by A Anglo-Saxon liodhum, by D lidh = 
joints. 

Stanza 31. Cata crines is glossed by A Anglo-Saxon huppbaan = hip. 
The source of the term cata crines is obscure and any derivation 
from kataxpivw = deliver judgement, seems very difficult, though there 
was a school of mediaeval thinkers who made the loins the seat of 
judgement. Williams (Joc. cit.) thinks that cata may be the Greek 
xara, which was commonly used in the Latin of the sixth century 
as equivalent to ad or juxta. 

Stanza 32. Cambas. E reads gambas; A reads cambas, and is glossed 
Anglo-Saxon homme = hams. | 

Genuclis, glossed by A Anglo-Saxon cniethum = knees, written 
above an older and erased gloss that was perhaps hweorfbanum, 
a word which would bear the meaning throw-bones, i.e. knuckle- 
Lones. 

Stanza 33. Ramos con crescentes decies = the ten growing branches, i.e. 
the fingers. Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 742 : m6 mevtdlouo avov 
dard yAwpod téuvew = to cut the withered from the quick from the five- 
branched = to cut the nails of the hand. 


THE LORICA OF GILDAS THE BRITON I3I 


Mentagris, glossed by A Anglo-Saxon tanum = toes. No source for 
the word can be suggested. An eighth-century glossary, printed by 
T. Wright, gives mentagra, bituihn, which helps no further. 

Stanza 34. Bassibus from Bdovs = step, glossed by A Anglo-Saxon 
stepum = steps. 

Stanza 35. Jugulam. Bosworth and Toller (Anglo-Saxon dictionary, 
Oxford, 1898) suggest that jugulam = collar-bone, but the word is 
glossed by A Anglo-Saxon dhearmgewind, which must mean ab- 
dominal cavity or peritoneum from thearm = intestine, dhearmgewind 
being thus the parts that enwrap the intestine. 

Pectusculum is glossed by A Anglo-Saxon briostban = breastbone. E 
gives an Irish gloss equivalent to the breast of the palm. 

Stanza 37. Marsem perhaps for marsupium = pouch. The word is 
glossed by A Anglo-Saxon bursan = purse; E Irish selg = spleen. 

Fithrem is glossed by D Anglo-Saxon snedeldhearm := intestine. 

Obligio is glossed by A Anglo-Saxon nettan = net, the usual mediaeval 
term for the rete mirabile, a part of the brain to which especial impor- 
tance was attached by Galen and all mediaeval writers. E has an 
Irish gloss, inglais, to which no meaning can be attached. 

Stanza 38. Toliam glossed by A Anglo-Saxon readan. In Wright’s 
vocabulary there is an Anglo-Saxon gloss; reada tolia vel porunula 
(i, 4446-8). Reada = red, and Dr. Henry Bradley suggested that 
toliam may represent the Middle English tuly or tewly = purple, a 


word which he thought might possibly be derived from nan or 


from yoin and nydin = worm and also scarlet, i.e. the colour ob- 


tained from the worm of the shell-fish murex. This tuly and toliam 
may be the red worm-like structure, the uvula. 
Fibras glossed by A and D Anglo-Saxon smal = small. E gives Irish 
gloss = sinews. Smeel perhaps refers to the small ends of the muscles. 
Buclamini glossed by A and D Anglo-Saxon heorthoman, for heort-hama 
= heart cover = pericardium or midriff. 

Stanza 39. Inginem perhaps for inguinem. B reads lunginam and A 
glosses Anglo-Saxon tha sceare = shears or scissors = perhaps for 
the crutch or fork of the legs. | 

Stanza 40. Pantes for waves = all. B reads partes, D pantas. A and 
H gloss Anglo-Saxon ealle = all. E glosses omnes. 

Stanza 42. Sensibus cum decim fabrefactis foribus. A and D gloss Anglo- 
Saxon mid ten durum = with ten doors. The ten doors or portals of 
entry of sensations is a mediaeval commonplace. The mouth counts 
for two (cesophagus ++ trachea), the others being eyes, ears, nostrils, 
urethra, and anus. Or the five senses may be more strictly followed 
and the hands reckoned as the organs of feeling. 


132 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


§ 5. Appendix 
Manuscripts of the Lorica of Gildas 

The Lorica of Gildas is known from the following six manuscripts :— 

(A) Early Ninth Century—Cambridge University Library LI.I, 10, 
fol. 43. This MS. is known as the Book of Cerne, but is better described 
as the Prayer Book of Aedeluald the Bishop. The section containing the 
Lorica is fully glossed in the Kentish dialect of Anglo-Saxon by a hand 
that is probably of the tenth century. These glosses are valuable as giving 
the meaning of many words which would be otherwise untranslatable. 
The latest edition of it is contained in Dom. A. B. Kuypers, O.S.B., The 
Book of Cerne, Cambridge, 1902, p. 85. The drawings and illuminations 
of this volume are discussed by J. A. Westwood in his Facsimiles of the 
Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS., London, 
1868, p. 43. The text is also printed and elaborately compared with the 
other MSS. and discussed by R. P. Wiilcker, Bibliothek der Angelsachsts- 
chen Prosa, Bd. vi, Hamburg, 1905. See also H. Sweet, The Oldest 
English Texts, Early English Text Society, London, 1885. 

(B) Eighth or Ninth Century.——British Museum Library, Harley, 
2965. A manuscript formerly belonging to St. Mary’s Abbey or Nunna- 
minster at Winchester. The text is printed by W. de Gray Birch, in 
An Ancient Manuscript of the Eighth or Ninth Century, published by the — 
Hampshire Record Society, Winchester and London, 1889. We have 
in the main reproduced this text. See also New Palaeographical Society 
Facsimiles, plate 163. 

(C) Ninth Century —Cologne Cathedral Library, formerly at Darm- 
stadt, where it was numbered 2106. It has been copied from a glossed 
original and has several corrections in a later hand. The text is printed 
by Mone in Lateinische Hymnen, Freiburg, 1853, vol. i. p. 367. 

(D) Late Tenth Century British Museum Library, Harley, 585, 
fo. 152. The Lorica is here placed in the midst of an Anglo-Saxon 
medical receipt book known as the ‘ Lacnunga’ (i.e. Medications, 
recipes), and is fully glossed by an Anglo-Saxon hand of the eleventh 
century. This version has been printed by O. Cockayne, Leechdoms, 
Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, London, 1864, vol. i. p. 73. 

(E) Fourteenth Century.—Royal Irish Academy at Dublin, the Leabhar 
Breac or Speckled Book. This MS. is an immense collection of ecclesias- 
tical pieces, and has been published in facsimile by the Royal Irish Academy, 
Dublin, 1876. The text of the Lorica is glossed in Irish, and text and 
glosses are printed and discussed by Whitley Stokes, Irish Glosses, Dublin, 
1860, p. 133. It has been printed again by Bernard and Atkinson in the 
Irish Liber Hymnorum. 

(F) Sixteenth Century.—Vienna Royal Library, 11, 857. This text has 
been printed by Daniel in the Thesaurus Hymnologicus, 1855, vol. iv. p. 364. 


SCORPION AND SNAKE FIGHTING 


From an Anglo-Saxon Herbal of about 1050 (Cott. Vit. C. iii), The drawing 
of the scorpion is fairly accurate, showing that the artist of the original, from 
which this was copied, worked in the Mediterranean region. The plant, which 
is marked “‘ Solago Minor” in the MS., is perhaps intended to represent the 
Heliotropium Europaeum of botanists. See page 187. 


[133 


IV 
EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 


Introduction 


; é : . Pp. 133 
§ 1. Greek Medicine filtered through Latin p. 138 
§ 2. Ecclesiastical Elements A p- 147 
§ 3. Salernitan Texts. : : : p. 148 
§ 4. Native Teutonic Magic and Herb-Lore . Pp. 149 
§ 5. Celtic-Magic : (a) Native or Celto-Roman p. 158 

(6) Hisperic . ; : : p. 161 
§ 6. A Composite Mass of Herb-Lore from South Italy p. 164 
§ 7. Byzantine Magic and Theurgy a p. 164 
§ 8. Pagan Roman Spells p. 166 


Introduction 

THE practice of the healing art during the centuries that 
intervened between the fall of Greek science and the rise 
of the experimental method is a topic from which even the 
professed historian of medicine has usually averted his 
gaze. ‘I'he material is neither edifying nor attractive, while 
the discipline demanded of one who would investigate it is 
by no means inconsiderable. Nevertheless the field is 
not altogether barren, for it can be made to yield valuable 
information as to the character and direction of cultural 
streams, and it is perhaps especially productive in just 
those periods where our other sources of information are 
most meagre. 

The history of medicine in this great stretch of time is 
sharply divided into two parts by an event of great impor- 
tance for the development of the human intellect. That 
event is the arrival in the West of the Arabian learning, the 
‘remnant of Greek science that had dwelt in the Moslem 
world to find its way again to the Occident at a date which 
varied in different countries but which may roughly be placed 
at the twelfth century [Fig. 31]. It is with pre-Arabian 


134 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


material only that we shall deal here, and to it we may attach 


the title of Dark Age Medicine. But it must be remembered 


that for medicine the Dark Age of our notation extends far 
beyond the limits usually assigned to that period byhistorians. 
So far as England is concerned some of its documents 
undoubtedly date from as late as the thirteenth century. 
After the first half of that century, however, material, other 
than pure folk-medicine, free from Arabian influence is 
distinctly rare. 

The magical and medical practice of Early England has 
come down to us, in a fragmentary state it is true, by two 
channels, manuscripts and folk-lore. It is to the manu- 
scripts that we shall here appeal, but in judging written 
matter produced by a barbarian people among whom the 
Latin culture was diffusing itself from the shattered frag- 
ments of the Roman Empire, certain special precautions 
are necessary. 

Firstly, we must resist the temptation of inferring the 
primitiveness or the reverse of any practice from the date 
of the manuscript in which it is found. The main agent 
in the spread of Southern culture among the English was 
the Church, and its instrument—for our purpose at least— 
the art of writing. Consider what happens when a savage 
tribe is converted, under modern conditions, to the religion 
of aruling race. First Bible and Prayer Book are translated 
and these circulate among the earliest proselytes, who learn 
to read and write from devotional works. Later the 
purposes of Law and Commerce are subserved by the 
written language. But it is not until generations have 
passed, and the art of writing has become far more familiar, 
that we expect to find the intimate relations of life expres- 
sing themselves through the new medium. 

So with the documents of Early English origin. If 
we turn to an eighth-century writer such as Bede we are 
faced with purely ecclesiastical material, bearing hardly a 
trace of the heathenism of his father or grandfather and 
almost without any indication that the imported culture was 


ae, 
ae 
am 
a) > 
ue 
% 
¥ 
| on 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 135 


a new thing in his part of the world. ‘There is scarcely the 
mention of a heathen god or hero and practically no word 
of native magic. The works of Bede might have been 
written by a foreign missionary instead of by an Englishman, 
for any information as to native customs that they contain, 
while of native medicine there is not a particle though there 
are plenty of medical references. On the other hand, such 
manuscripts as Beowulf, or, more important for our purpose, 
the Lacnunga (Harley 585), are not earlier than the eleventh 
century, and yet are full of the more primitive material. In 
spite of its late date the Lacnunga is our best source of the 
primitive medicine of this country untouched by Christian 
influence, and its compiler does not hesitate to name the 
northern gods, Woden and the /®sir, in the weaving of his 
spells. The attitude of the writer of the Lacnunga to this 
material is exhibited by the way in which such purely heathen 
paragraphs alternate with charms mentioning the sacred 
personages of Christian tradition. But of any under- 
standing of the nature of the Christian religion he exhibits 
not a trace; for him the efficacy of Christ and Peter is 
wholly on a par with that of Woden and the sir. It is 
this intrusion of primitive elements into late documents 
and the full Christianization of much earlier records, that 
make it impossible to describe our material in the chrono- 
logical order of the manuscripts. 

But there is a second source of error against which we 
must guard. Magic—and all early medicine partakes largely 
of the nature of magic—is probably among all peoples, 
and certainly among the North European barbarians, 
essentially syncretic. Of all forms of cultural influence 
it is magic that passes most easily and most rapidly from 
people to people. Any object or process or person, held 
in esteem by a superior class, may easily acquire magical 
powers among those of lower culture. Quintus Serenus 
Sammonicus, a Latin physician of the third century, advised 
as a remedy for quartan ague the placing of the fourth book 
of Homer’s Jad under the sufferer’s head! But we may 


136 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


take a more modern and even more absurd instance of the 
ease and rapidity of the passage of exotic magical formulae. 
It is told of Justice Holt (1642-1710) that he led a wild youth, 
and that on one occasion, finding himself near Oxford and 
without money, he procured a week’s lodging by pretending 
to charm away an ague from which his landlady’s daughter 
was suffering. He scribbled a few words of Greek on a 
scrap of parchment that had been used as a label and, rolling 
it up, directed that it should be bound to the girl’s wrist 
and left there till she was well. Many years after, an old — 
woman was brought before him charged with sorcery. The 
evidence showed that she professed to cure the fever-stricken 
by the application of a magic bit of parchment. Justice 
Holt examined the fragment and found it to be the very 
piece with which he had worked his miraculous cure many 
years before, for his own Greek words were still legible upon 
it. His lordship confessed and the woman, whowas acquitted, 
was one of the last to be tried for witchcraft in this country. 
In the course of our discussion we shall encounter Greek 
periapts of this very sort in use among the Anglo-Saxons 
(p. 165), but we must not infer from them any more intimate 
contact with the Greek originals. 

There is yet a third special precaution needed, and this 
concerns the language of the documents. Early English 
magic and medicine has been investigated mainly by philo- 
logists, interested in the material as literature in the Anglo- 
Saxon language but paying less attention to the nature 
and affinities of its magical elements. For our purposes, 
however, we shall have to neglect the linguistic distinction, 
for the actual language in which these documents have come 
down to us—English or Latin—is hardly more than an 
accident. The magic and medicine of Early England must 
be studied as a whole if we wish to learn something of the 
cultural factors that have gone to make up this remarkable 
system, or to gain a true picture of the attitude of the inhabi- 
tants of this country towards the healing art, before the 
arrival of that scholastic method and Arabian learning 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 137 


which wrought nearly as great a mental revolution in the 
thirteenth, as the experimental method and scientific attitude 
in the seventeenth century (see p. 75 ff). 

Before we turn to the medico-magical material itself a 
word may be said concerning the men for whom it was 
written and by whom it was used. It is usually assumed 
that any documents that come to us from the Dark or Middle 
Ages must necessarily have been written by clerics, and it 


Fic. 50.—Durham Cathedral Library MS., Hunter 100. [Fo. is Late Eleventh 
Century. A leech branding a patient who has just been shorn. Neither the leech nor 
his assistant ate tonsured. 


is certain that the most beautiful of the Early English medical 
manuscripts, including all the illuminated specimens, were 
prepared in monasteries. ‘The texts of these illuminated 
manuscripts are, however, copies, or at best little but 
translations, and the documents to which they go back 
were hardly, if at all, clericized or even Christianized. 
Moreover, there are certain works, such as the Leech-book 
of Bald and the Lacnunga, where the scribe himself must 
have been a layman. This is emphasized by the frequent 
demand that certain ceremonies need the aid of a priest, 


138 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


a superfluous direction in a book intended only for monastic 
use. There is sufficient evidence to show that, as early as 
the seventh century, there were lay physicians in this country 
who were freely consulted by prominent ecclesiastics. Of 


the status and character of these leeches we know next to 


nothing, but we are tempted to fill the gap in our knowledge 
from the accounts of the hereditary physicians of the Welsh 
and Gaelic peoples. 

In the illuminated Early English manuscripts there are 
a number of pictures in which a leech makes his appearance, 
and he is never represented as tonsured [Fig. 50]. It is 
perhaps dangerous to draw a definite conclusion from this 
until the source and history of these figures and the degree 
to which they were mere copies has been finally determined, 
but it is at least safe to say that the medical writings are 
less clericized than most Early English material. 


The Anglo-Saxon medico-magical writings form a very 
composite mass in which a great variety of elements may be 
distinguished. ‘These may be classed roughly according to 
the degree to which they have influenced the material that 
has survived [Fig. 51]. 

I. Greek Medicine filtered through Latin. (True 
Dark Age Medicine.) 

II. Ecclesiastical Elements. 

Til. Salernitan Texts. 

IV. Native Teutonic Magic and Herb-lore. 

._. { (a) Native or Celto-Roman. 
V. Celtic Magic : { (3) Hispetic. 
VI. A composite mass of herb-lore from Southern Italy. 
VII. Byzantine Magic and Theurgy. 
VIII. Pagan Roman Spells. 


§ 1. Greek Medicine filtered through Latin. (True Dark Age 
Medicine.) 

Medicine reached the barbarian peoples of the West at 

a time when the scientific system of Greece was in complete 


io. > - 


BSE POCO Foy me Sed 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 139 


decay, and it came through Latin channels. It was thus 
merely copied or traditional and had none of those living 
characteristics so honourably associated with the Hippo- 
cratic and Galenic works. Poor as most of this material 
is, it is yet of importance to us to make some sort of estimate 


Sources of Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Magic. 


Teutonic eipane as 
; Ccleslasii 
A.D. ag: + Pasig L Lalin A.D. 
400 oe Bie: ue 400 
a Felecia bet? 
ae ain 
Kee 
wh Byzantine 3 600 
Greek Medicine 
3 et ee a Z 
800 % 3 800 
S South Italian 
Danish? ..__ “1 ¥. 
900 a ve 900 
Norman NS 
t0C0 = 
Nil alernifan rae 


ING 


A composite mass conlaining in order of importance :- 


1 eve Medicine filtered through Latin (true Dark Age Medicine) 
2. Ecclesiastical Elements 

3. Salernitan texts etc 

4. Native Teulonic Magic and Herblore 

5. Celtic (Hisperic + Native) Magic 

6. Composite Herblore from Soul Italy 

7. Byzaniine Magic and Theurgy 

8. Pagan Roman Spells 


Fic. 51. 


of what Greek medical books were available to the men of 
the later Empire, in order to estimate the influence of Greek 
sources on Early English literature. 

During the period of Gothic domination in Italy there 
had been an active process of translation of Greek medical 
works into Latin. ‘Thus much we learn from Cassiodorus 


140 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


(490-585). By an examination of the manuscripts them- 
selves and an investigation of ancient library catalogues we 
can form a good idea of the material available for distribution 
among the barbarians of the North and West between the 
seventh and the eleventh centuries. The task is rendered 
possible by the fact that the characteristic Dark Age medi- 
cine is singularly constant in character, whether it comes 
from Southern Italy, Rhineland, Gaul, or Switzerland. 
This system of monkish medicine was practised in its 
entirety at such a centre, for instance, as the Anglo-Saxon 
settlement of St. Gall. We have even a ninth-century 
plan of a hospital and physic garden projected there. It is 
only of very recent years, however, that the investigation of © 
all this Dark Age material has been seriously undertaken 
by historians. Their work is still incomplete and our 
survey—necessarily brief—must be regarded moreover as 
but provisional. 

The medical writings of the Dark Age that are classical 
in origin may be classed under three headings : 

(a) Translations of Greek works into Latin. Of these 
more than sixty are known to have been in circulation 
in the Dark Ages. Among the most popular—as shown by 
the number of surviving manuscripts—were the following : 

Dioscorides (circa A.D. 60), De materia medica. | 

Galen (130-200)—sundry works. A work On urines 

and another On fevers were popular. A good many 
fragments of other works are known. 

Oribasius (325-403), De parabilibus medicamentis (ad 

Eunapium). 

Alexander of Tralles (525-605), Therapeutica. 

Paul of Aegina (625-90), Book VII of the Epztomae 

medicae. | 

Of these writers the first two were Latinized at least as 
early as the fifth century, the last three probably not until 
the seventh or eighth, but it is the last three that had, in 
fact, most influence on the English material. Several 
works of Hippocrates, in wretched translations, were also 


PLATE IV 


¢ 4 
Ser eey 


bulor 


*‘MUGCWYRT’ = MUGWORT, ARTEMISIA PONTICA 
A species foreign to England. 


From an Anglo-Saxon Herbal of about 1050 (Cott. Vit. C, iii). 
See p. 187. 


140] . 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE I4I 


known in Dark Age Europe, but they appear to have been 
less used than those we have enumerated, and there is no 
evidence that any work of Hippocrates was available to 
early English writers. 

(5) In addition to the actual translations from the Greek 
there were a number of works written in Latin during the 
late Empire which, though borrowing from Greek and under 
the influence of the decaying Greek tradition, were yet 
composed in the Latin language. These are mostly the 
work of Provincials, Barbarians, or Graeco-Italians, and 
are often admixed with local superstitions. Among the 
more popular were : 

Pseudo-Dioscorides, De herbis feminis (sixth century ?). 

Pseudo-Apuleius, De herbis (fourth century). 

Sextus Placitus Papyriensis, De Medicina ex Animalibus 

(fourth century ?). 
Marcellus Empiricus of Bordeaux, De Medicamentis 
(first half of fifth century). 

Pseudo-Hippocratic Epistles (fourth century ?), 

The general form of all these works was fixed between 
the fourth and the sixth centuries. 

(c) A special position must be accorded to the Natural 
History of Pliny and of his abstractor, Plinius Valerianus, 
which were available in England at an early date. From 
Bede and Alcuin onward, Pliny together with Isidore of 
Seville (560-636) provided the staple of such natural 
knowledge as was possessed by English writers. Pliny 
was probably the most widely read of any non-ecclesiastical 
writer throughout the Dark Ages. 

Manuscripts written in England before the Arabian 
revival contain numerous quotations from all of these works, 
and indeed they form the groundwork of early English 
medicine. The medicine derived from these works forms 
a fairly definite system and is easily traced. Its philoso- 
phical basis is the doctrine of the four elements and the 
four humours, a view which finds ample illustration in 
English manuscripts. In the belief of the men of the Dark 


142 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Ages there was a close relation between the external anc ; af 
the internal world, the macrocosm and the microcosm. Thus _ 
‘YR 


Auster 
Eurauster 


Septentrio 
Circius 


cosm. Redrawn from MS. St. John’s College, Oxford, 17 (fo. 7 v.), written about 


1110 but copied from an original of about 100 years earlier. 


they discerned a parallel between the four ages of man 
and the four seasons, between the humours of the body x 


a 
n& 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 143 


and the solstices and equinoxes, between the four elements 
and the four cardinal points, and so on. Such a scheme 
is elaborated in a diagram drawn up by Byrhtfers of Ramsey 


corresponds to 
South wind 
+ 


corresponds to 


North wind 
¢ 


corresponds to 
West wind 
+ 


Fic. 53.—English version of Fig. 52. 


(c. 1000), the commentator of Bede [Figs. 52 and 53]. This 
diagram is remarkable for associating the initials of the four 
cardinal points (Arcton, Dysis, Anatole, Mesembrios) with 
the letters of the name ADAM to whom in the text the 


144 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


term protoplast is attached. The occurrence of this word is 
itself of interest since it is of liturgical origin and is found 
in the so-called Sacramentarium Leonianum (eighth century) 
and in the Mozarabic liturgy, but is not encountered in 
liturgies of later Roman origin. It is therefore probable 
that the scheme which Byrhtfers introduces had arrived in 
England before the eighth century. 

More noteworthy is a short passage that is probably the 
earliest medical text by an English hand, a small ninth- 
century fragment consisting of three paragraphs or sentences 
in a manuscript now at Paris (Bibl. Nat. Lat. 11411). This 
manuscript was written at Echternach, a monastery founded 
by the Englishman Willibrord, the apostle of the Frisians 
(657-738), and to Echternach, for many generations after 
his death, English and Irish monks were wont to flock. 
The document itself is in the midst of an Hisperic text and 
exhibits undoubted Irish influence. All three paragraphs 
of this short text are taken from medical works known to 
have been in circulation during the Dark Ages and forming 
part of the characteristic medical system of that period. 
We will, however, here consider only the first paragraph, 
which may be translated thus : 

‘ The device of the sphere of the philosopher Pythagoras, 
which Apollonius described for the discovery of anything 
concerning the sick. Thou shouldst determine the day 
of the week and of the moon (on which he fell sick) and (the 
numerical value) of his name according to the letters 
written below. Add them together and divide by thirty and 
consider the remainder. Examine what is written below, 
and if it fall in the upper part he will live and do well; if 
below, he will die ’ [Fig. 54]. 

The sphere of Pythagoras is a recognized magical device. 
It is possibly of Egyptian origin, but it certainly spread to 
Europe through Greek intermediaries. It is translated 

1'The text has here in spreta, which is meaningless. ‘This must stand 


for a misinterpretation of some such abbreviated form as im Spta or in sc‘pta 
for infra scripta. 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 145 


from Greek and is known in that language from a third- 
century papyrus (Leyden V) and in Latin from a large 
number of early manuscripts from the eighth century 
onward. During the Dark and Middle Ages this diagram 
is common in the English manuscripts, where it is variously 
attributed to Hippocrates, Democritus, Apuleius, Apol- 
lonius, Pythagoras, Columcille, Bede, Petosiris, Nechepso, 


and Plato! Quite a number of specimens date from 


Anglo-Saxon times. 


A ill 
D XXIII B ill 
C Xxil E Xil 
G VU F ill 
H Vl I. XV 
L XxX! K XV 
M XXII N xvi 
P Xxilll O 1x 
Q XxX! oy R Xill 
XVIII 
T Vill S vil 
XXI 
UV X VI 
XXII 
Zit You 


Fic. 54.—The Sphere of Pythagoras according to Bibl. Nat. MS. Lat. 11411, fo. 99, 
written at the English Monastery of Echternach in the ninth century. 


Why is this device so often repeated in the Anglo-Saxon 
manuscripts ? We can obtain some answer from its associa- 
tions. The leech-books, whether written in monasteries 
Or no, are, as we have seen, essentially lay products. But 
the earliest English specimens of magic spheres of Petosiris 
are nearly all in liturgical books and associated with blood- 


_ letting calendars. Thus the earliest, next to that of the 


Echternach MS., is in the Leofric Missal written for the 
Bishop of Exeter in g70. In that manuscript it is attached 
10 


146 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


to a venesection text and an apparatus for fixing the date of 
Church festivals [Fig. 55]. Itis thus probable that the magic 
sphere was employed in monasteries for determining whether 
venesection might be resorted to or no. Bleeding was 
periodically performed in these houses both as a regimen 
of health and as an aid to withstanding the lusts of the 


flesh ; ERA Apu ley Devita Demogrevel 
Pamrgenslerssayaeeie icon 
rh Y : 
Collica perwumenvar Qvicqvi cvptS ESSE PROBANDVA, @ diuide par aK dedd rh Sabato nt 3 8 pl res : 
WNGE SvawL NOMEN FERIAM Iv aMQvevret « fuproat conuenent pare numerufurcalifene, $1 tferiow parce conuencrie- 


CollecTamave VNA SVMMAM PSR WRN URIGENOS « anubsneieees ia To Gr - 
Qvong:SvpeRFVERI f ROTVINS DISCERNET VIERQVE . mul negtauc See it A Steaccleurn 
QVOSRETINET VITAE NECNON ETMORT'S Ima oe jrefSiduefdin? SEP A 
SISVpRA FVERIT Vivel MOALEIVEL ETIN FRAs =F ot 


MRBaiaS 


Fic. 55.—Sphere of Apuleius. From the Leoftic Missal (Bodl. MS. 718, fo. 50 v. 
and 51 t.), written at Glastonbury about the year 970. The figures symbolize Life 
and Death. The day of death can be discovered by a device similar to that described 
on p. 144. 

But there is another association of the magic sphere. The 
Leofric Missal is a particularly diminutive specimen of its 
class. The original binding has disappeared, but similar 
small missals are frequently provided with wide overlapping 
leather flaps, so that the volume could be wrapped in them 
and carried through the wet without injury. Such missals 
were doubtless used in visiting the sick and the sphere 
would aid the priest in deciding whether to administer 
extreme unction. 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 147 


§ 2. Ecclesiastical Elements 


Ecclesiastical elements are found throughout the whole 
corpus of Anglo-Saxon medicine and magic. Paternosters 
accompany every conceivable medical process. Such ele- 
ments are perhaps the least interesting of the factors in 
Anglo-Saxon medicine, since they are known from many 
sources, are easily recognized, and still survive in folk- 
custom. One instance, however, is unusual and worthy of 
special notice. 

In the Ecclesiastical History of Bede (written 731) it is 
related how John of Beverley, Bishop of Hexham, came to 
a monastery where a nun laboured under a grievous disease, 
having been lately bled in the arm. While engaged in 
study she had been seized with a violent pain and her wound 
swelled so that she was now confined to bed and was sick 
unto death. The abbess begged the bishop that he would 
give her his blessing and touch her, for this she believed 
might aid her. The bishop then asked when the maiden 
had been bled, and being told that it was on the fourth day 
of the moon he said, ‘ You did very ill and unskilfully to 
bleed her on that day, for I remember that Archbishop 
Theodore of blessed memory said that bleeding at that time 
was very dangerous when the light of the moon and the tide 
of the ocean is increasing.’ Nevertheless the blessing and 
touch of the good bishop restored her to health. 

The ‘ blessed Theodore ’ was the Greek ecclesiastic who 
came to this country as Archbishop of Canterbury in 668. 
The doctrine that connected bleeding with the tides and the 
moon was a commonplace of Greek medicine and was 
certainly adopted at Rome. It is mentioned in the pseudo- 
Hippocratic Epistle of Maecenas, but the supposed relation 
of the condition of the blood to the tides and moon is 
treated more fully in several works of the Galenic corpus, 
especially in the Regimen in acute diseases and the spurious 
treatise On crises from which Theodore more probably 
derived it. It is noteworthy that in the very early Celtic 


er Sp Si) 
ey eae ee eet 


148 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Calendar of Coligny the first half of the lunar month, that © 
is to say, the period of the waxing moon, is held to be 
unlucky. 


§ 3. Salermtan Texts 


Salernitan texts, like ecclesiastical elements, are easily 
traced and therefore need only brief discussion. Of the 
early history of the medical school of Salerno our concep- 
tions are still very indefinite, though the surviving early 
South Italian documents suggest that a knowledge of Greek 
medicine was widely diffused in what was once Magna 
Graecia in the seventh and eighth centuries, while hints from 
Cassiodorus carry us as far back as the sixth century.’ 

In the ninth or tenth century this diffused medical 
knowledge began to be gathered together at several centres 
of which Monte Cassino and Salerno were the most im- 
portant. At the monastery of Monte Cassino the process 
went no further than copying and translating, but at 
Salerno a definite lay medical school arose, and in the 
eleventh century a certain amount of genuine observation 
and investigation was being made. The great monument 
of that school, the Breslau codex, containing no less than 
thirty-five separate medical treatises, has been edited, and 
reference to this enables us to detect Salernitan influence 
where it occurs in early Western medicine. 

One of the medical treatises in the Anglo-Saxon language, 
the so-called Peri didaxeon, is mainly a translation of the 
works of certain Salernitan writers of the eleventh century, 
while Latin medical works written in England in the 
early twelfth century may be traced to similar sources. The 
influence of the Salernitan school extended far beyond the 
period of which we treat and forms the basis not only of 
much modern English folk-medicine but also of some of the 
practice of the modern herbalist. 


4 
‘ 


a es etn 


1 The history of the School of Salerno is discussed in greater detail 
on p. 240. . 2 


_ 
ig 

i 
¥, , 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 149 


§ 4. Native Teutonic Magic and Herb-Lore 


Native Teutonic magical material may be distinguished 
from imported elements of Classical, Ecclesiastical, or 
Salernitan origin by the presence of four characteristic 
elements: the doctrine of specific venoms, the doctrine of 
the nines, the doctrine of the worm as the cause of disease, 
and lastly the doctrine of the elf-shot. 

We call such material ‘ Native Teutonic,’ but it might 
more fitly be termed Indo-Germanic, since these doctrines 
are to be found among all Indo-Germanic peoples and 
are encountered even in the Vedas. Yet when we meet 
these four doctrines in passages of English origin without 
classical or Celtic elements, and especially when combined 
with references to Teutonic gods or customs, the material 
may with reasonable certainty be regarded as having been 
brought by the Anglo-Saxon tribes from their Continental 
home. 

Perhaps the best specimen of the Native Teutonic magic 
is the Lay of the Nine Healing Herbs, of which we here give 
a section from the Lacnunga. 


Dha genam woden Then took Wodan 

VIIII wuldortanas, Nine magic twigs, 

sloh dha tha naeddran Smote then that serpent 

‘thaet heo on VIIII tofleah. That in nine bits she flew apart. 
nu magon thas VIIII wyrta Now these nine herbs avail 
widh nygon wuldorgeflogenum, Against nine spirits of evil, 
widh VIIII attrum Against nine venoms 

7 widh nygon onflygnum : And against nine winged onsets, 


. Gainst the red venom, 

. Gainst the white venom, 

. Gainst the purple venom, 

. Gainst the yellow venom, 

. Gainst the green venom, 

. Gainst the livid venom, 

. Gainst the blue venom, 

. Gainst the brown venom, 

. Gainst the crimson venom, 


widh dhy readan attre, 
widh dhy hwitan attre, 
widh dhy [haew]enan attre, 
widh dhy geolwan attre, 
widh dhy grenan attre, 
widh dhy wonnan attre, 
widh dhy wedenan attre, 
widh dhy brunan attre, 
widh dhy basewan attre ; 


OO CONTI AM RW DN ew 


150 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


widh wyrmgeblaed, 
widh waetergeblaed, 
widh thorngeblaed, 
widh thysgeblaed, 
widh ysgeblaed, 
widh attorgeblaed, 


gif aenig attor 

eastan fleogan, 
[odhdhe aenig sudhan] 
adhdhe aenig nordhan 
odhdhe aenig westan 
[genaegan] cume, 

ofer werdheode. 

ic ana wat 

ea rinnende, 

7 tha nygon naedran. 
[nu] behealdadh ; 
motan calle weoda nu 
wyrtum aspringan, 
saes toslupan, 

eal sealt waeter, 
thonne ic this attor 

of the geblawe. 


. Gainst worm blister, 
. Gainst water blister, 
. Gainst thorn blister, 
. Gainst thistle blister, 
. Gainst ice blister, 

. Gainst venom blister, 
[Line missing] 

. [Line missing] 

g. [Line missing] 


oom Am & W ND fF 


If any venom 

Flying from the east 
[Or any from south] 
Or any from north 
Or any from west 
Come nigh, 

Over the world of men. 
I alone know 

The running streams 
And the nine serpents 
Now behold. 

All weeds must now 
Fail among herbs, 
Seas must dissolve, 
All salt water, 

When I this venom 
From thee blow. 


This passage contains three of the four elements of Teutonic 


folk-medicine, namely the doctrine of specific venoms, of the 


nines, and of the worm, though the fourth doctrine, the 
elf-shot (p.154), is not mentioned. 


The opening verses (lines 1-8) tell of Woden warring with 


the serpent or worm and how diseases arose from the frag- 
ments into which he smote the reptile. Woden smiting the 
worm is a well-known Teutonic myth. In the mythical 
cycle Woden was primarily the dispenser of victory, but 
he was also the bringer of many other forms of good luck 
and especially of good health. This part of the poem thus 
resolves itself into a charm of that well-known type which 
consists in the relation in a few words, usually of verse, of 
the story of a cure performed by some sacred personage. 


PLATE V 


HENNEBELLE = HENBANE = HYOSCYAMUS RETICULATUS 


A Mediterranean species foreign to England. 


“ fe From an Anglo-Saxon Herbal of about 1os0 (Cott. Vit. C. iii). 
See page 187. 


150] 


oan 
+ 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE I51 


A good example of such a charm invoking Woden is 
to be found in a tenth-century Old High German manu- 
script at Merseburg Cathedral in Saxony : 


Phol ende Wédan Phol (Balder) and Woden 
vuorun zi holza fared to a wood ; 
dé wart demo Balderes there was Balder’s 
volon sin vuoz birenkit. foal’s foot sprained. 
dé biguolen Wédan Then charmed Woden 
so he wola conda as well he knew how 
sése bénrenki for bone sprain 
sdse bluotrenki , for blood sprain 
sése lidirenki for limb sprain. 
bén zi béna Bone to bone 
- bluot zi bluoda blood to blood 
lid zi geliden limb to limbs 
sése gelimida sin. as though they were glued. 


This very charm is still used for sprains in the Northern 
Highlands, where perhaps the Norsemen brought it. In 
the Gaelic form, however, Christ has taken the place of 
Woden. The same charm is known also from other Indo- 
Germanic sources, as, for instance, the Atharva Veda. 

By the Romans Woden was early identified with the god 
Mercury, whom he resembles in that from him proceed 
diseases and their cure. He also influenced the casting of 
lots as a means of bringing good luck. Now the word tan 
in the Lay of the Nine Healing Herbs which we have trans- 
lated twig (line 2) is specifically a twig used in casting lots. 
‘Augury and Divination by lot,’ writes Tacitus of the 
Germans, ‘no people practise more diligently. The use 
of the lots is simple A little bough is cut from a fruit- 
bearing tree and cut into slips ; these are distinguished by 
runes (notis quibusdam), and thrown casually and at random 
over a white cloth.’ From the twig for casting lots tan 
came to mean the Jot itself. ‘The nine twigs that Woden 
takes up are these twigs of fate which are to bring a 
better lot to the sick man on recitation of the magic song. 

Following the introduction of Woden and his magic 


152 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


twigs is a description of their powers (lines 9-26). The 
nine poisons or flying things are enumerated, and the nine 
diseases that they produce. The term gebled which we 
have translated blister is from bled, a common term for a 
breath or spirit, and the description of disease as a bled, 
blast or blister, is encountered frequently in Teutonic folk- 
lore. The wind, the results of which are manifest while 
the agent is invisible, bears an obvious analogy to disease. 
The onfligene, the on-flying things (line 8), are the venoms 
which blow about in the air and, reaching the surface of the 
body, produce their characteristic diseases. ‘They are 
repeatedly referred to in a refrain of the Lay as ‘ the 
loathed things that rove through the land,’ a phrase also 
encountered in modern Danish charms. Thus the best 
translation both of onfligen and of gebled would perhaps be 
infection, though our modern conception of infection is 
certainly not contained in it. There is a reflection of the 
nine venoms in King Lear (III, 4) where 


Swithold footed thrice the old (i.e. the wold or weald) ; 
He met the nightmare and her nine-fold. 


These nine-fold of the nightmare may be followed at large 
through Teutonic magic. 

After the nine venoms and the nine diseases comes a 
call addressed to the four quarters of heaven from which the 
four winds or blasts bring disease (lines 27-33). The divi- 
sion of the winds according to the four cardinal points is of 
Indo-Germanic origin developed independently of classical 
influence. The method of description of these winds is 
in contrast to the usual Greek and Latin system which gave 
special names to the various prevalent winds, a method 
more applicable to the regular Mediterranean climate with 
its periodic recurrence of winds from definite directions. 
The earliest Anglo-Saxon glosses from the eighth century 
onward contain the Greek names of winds taken probably 
from Plinius Valerianus, equated with the suitable geo- 
graphical direction in terms of cardinal points [Fig. 52]. 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 153 


The custom of uttering a charm against disease suc- 
cessively to the four cardinal points is also of Indo-Germanic 
origin and is found in the Atharva Veda. It occurs over 
and over again in Anglo-Saxon literature and is applied 
with both Christian and pagan invocations. The text we 
have given is obviously pagan, but there are others in the 
same manuscript which have become Christianized, thus : 


MS. Hartey 585, Fo. 174 v. 
Wis fleogendan attre For flying venom, 
asleah. IIII. scearpan smite four strokes 
on feower healfa mid towards the four quarters with 
gcenan brande_ ge- an oaken brand, 
blodga one brand make the brand bloody, 
weorp on weg sing throw away, [&] sing 


dis on III this thrice 
> Matheus me ducad Matthew leads me. 
> marcus me conseruzs Mark preserves me. 
‘i lucas me liberat Luke frees me. 
* iohannes me adiuuat John aids me. 


The Magic Lay continues with an obscure passage in 
which the disappearance of the disease appears to be 
compared to the process of being washed away by water. 
The whole body of Anglo-Saxon medicine is full of such 
references to the use of water for curative and magical 
purposes. It is related to, though not necessarily derived 
from, the Christian view of baptism. 

In the last two lines that we have quoted from the Lay 
the venom is described as being blown away by the power 
of the incantation, this being an inversion of the process by 
which the flying things were blown on to the surface of the 
body. As the winds have blown the disease to the sufferer 
so will the magician, by the might of his song, blow it from 
him. ‘The action of blowing is a common accompaniment 
of ‘Teutonic magic. 

But there remains an English doctrine concerning disease, 
which we have not yet discussed, a belief which the English 
shared also with the continental Teutons and with the 
Celts. The Teutonic peoples had not the belief in posses- 


154 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


sion by demons which was so characteristic of the Near 
East where Christianity took its rise. By the Teutonic 
tribes a large amount of disease was attributed, not to 
occupation by, but to the action of supernatural beings, 
elves, /Esir, smiths, or witches whose shafts fired at the 
sufferer produced his torments. Anglo-Saxon and even 
Middle English literature is replete with the notion of disease 
caused by the arrows of mischievous supernatural beings. 
This theory of disease we shall, for brevity, speak of as the 
doctrine of the elf-shot. 

The Anglo-Saxon tribes located these malicious elves 
everywhere, but especially in the wild uncultivated wastes 
where they loved to shoot their envenomed darts at the 
passer-by. There were water-elves, too, perhaps identical 
with the Nixies of whom we learn from Celtic sources. 
Such creatures were perhaps personifications of the deadly 
powers of marshes and waterlogged land. A water-elf 
is perhaps thought to have attacked one waterlogged with 
dropsy in the following passage : 


MS. Roya 12 D. XvU, FO. 124 Vv. 
Gif mon bip on weeter elf adle If a man be in the water-elf 
ponne beop him ha handnzglas_ disease, then are the nails of his 
wonne 7 ba eagan tearige 7 wile hand dusky and his eyes running 


locian niper. and he will look downward. 
and to prevent future attacks of the elf: 
Sing bis manegum sipum. eorpe Sing this many times. May 


pe onbere eallum hier mihtum 7 Earth bear on thee with all her 
mezgenum. bas galdor mon meg might and main. This magic one 
singan on wunde. may [also] sing on a wound. 


The effort to bury the elf in the earth in order to prevent 
his attacks has many parallels in folk-medicine. ‘Thus in 
Denmark a whitlow is cured by thrusting the finger into 
the ground and leaving it for some time, and a sick child 
is lightly covered with earth ; and in Holland, when a man 
has been struck by lightning—a form of elf-shot—he is 
interred as far as the neck to extract the evil. Buta closer 
parallel comes to us from a Latin source. Varro (i. 27) has 


154] 


PLATE VI 


ret i Oo 
anol urpu fans 
Lrors EAA 


VIPERINA = CARDUUS MARIANUS 


From a Herbal written at Bury St. Edmunds about 1120 
(Bodley 130). See pp. 187 and 190. 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 155 


preserved for us a Roman charm for gout or pain in the 
feet. The sufferer is to bow to the earth, to spit upon it, 
and to say thrice nine times the following charm : 
Terra pestem teneto. salus hic maneto. 
O earth, bear thou the pain. Health in my feet remain. 

The doctrine of the elf-shot was, however, a view of 
disease that could hardly persist in its purity. On the 
one hand the shafts of the elves were so easily confounded 
with the ‘flying venoms.’ On the other hand the attacks of 
elves presented a close similarity to the constant assaults 
of demons and possession by them from which the Christian 
ascetic suffered so sorely. In the later Anglo-Saxon 
material we therefore encounter a fusion of the ideas of 
demoniacal possession with the attacks of elves, witches, 
and other beings of the Teutonic mythology and with the 
effects of flying venoms. But though the human patient 
tended to become possessed by demons rather than merely 
elf-shot, the elves continued to make their malignant 
attacks on the lesser creation, the cattle, whom the more 


_ Self-respecting demons might be expected to regard as 


providing but a poor field for their accomplishments. 
Accordingly we find numerous references to elf-shot cattle. 


MS. Royat 12 D. xvu, Fo. 106 


Gif hors ofscoten sie. Nim If a horse be shot. Take then 


ponne pet seax pe pet hefte sie 
fealo hryperes horn 7 sien III 
etene neglas on. Writ ponne 
bam horse on pam hefde foran 
cristes mel pet hit blede writ 
ponne on pam hricge cristes mzl 
. . . Nim bonne pet winestre eare 
purh sting swigende . . . genimane 
girde sleah on bet bec ponne bip 
pet hors hal... Sy pet ylfa be 
him sie. pis him mzg to bote. 


The process of pricking se 


a knife of which the handle is horn 
of a roan ox and on which are 
three brass nails. Inscribe then 
Christ’s cross on the forehead of 
the horse so that it bleeds, then 
inscribe Christ’s cross on the back. 
... Take then the left ear and prick 
it through silently . . . Take then 
a staff, smite (the horse) on the 
back, then is the horse whole. .. . 
Whatever the elf, this has power 
as a remedy, 


ems to have been especially 


efficacious for elf-shot cattle, for we read of it repeatedly. 


A! eae eee 
’ , Py oaes = 


156 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Distinction between Elements of Teutonic and Greek Origin 


These doctrines then, the doctrine of specific venoms, the 
doctrine of the worm, the doctrine of the nines, and the 
doctrine of the elf-shot, separate Teutonic from Greek or 
Byzantine medicine and all are encountered in the Lacnunga. 
But before we leave the distinction between Teutonic medi- 
cine and the debased Greek or Byzantine system we may 
attempt a wider generalization. 

Late Greek medicine is a combination of at least four more 
or less discordant elements : 

(1) The purely scientific medicine which took its rise 
in the methods of the Ionian philosophers of the seventh 
century B.C., and was already far advanced by the time of 
Hippocrates in the fifth century B.c. 

(2) Demoniac medicine inherited largely from the civiliza- 
tion of the Tigris and Euphrates. Babylonian-Assyrian 
medicine was based on the theory that disease was due to 
the entry of a demon into the patient’s body ; hence formu- 
lae for exorcism became of great importance. Moreover, 
what was bad for the demon must be good for the patient ; 
hence arose the idea of nauseous drugs to disgust the demon — 
and weary him of his habitat. (It should be said that while © 
there is no demonism in early Greek native medicine, there 
are traces of it in Orphic literature.) 

(3) Magic, a term which, while leaving undefined, we 
may provisionally regard as primitive unorganized belief 
as to the relation of cause and effect. | 

(4) ‘ Common-sense’ empirical knowledge. 

As Greek medicine decayed and passed into its Byzantine 
stage, demoniac and magical elements became more promi- 
nent and scientific elements receded. This process, how- 
ever, had not gone so far but that the Greek medicine 
distributed among barbarian peoples by the time of the 
break up of the Empire still contained traces of all four 
elements. | 

Now in true native Teutonic medicine we can only expect 


PLATE VII 


| ie debar 


crotpaast: Ls 


fhe 
a : 


mic pe 
| nee mule 


4 I remit uni cefprce 


nica. fol rf par 


nacre cerminact \ 
3 ne C crud) gg fad 


futinnt. & incfit f & 


: B Eo dee i oles 


seas re 


*“CAMEDRIUM’ = TEUCRIUM CHAMAEDRYS 


From a Herbal written at Bury St. Edmunds about 1120 
(Bodley 130). See p. 187. 


156] 


* 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 157 


elements (3) and (4), i.e. magic and empirical knowledge. 
In the mixture of Teutonic and Byzantine elements that 
has come down to us under the name of the Anglo-Saxon 
Leechdoms it will usually be possible to separate magical 
and empirical elements into the native and the foreign 
group. 

As regards element (1), the true scientific medicine of 
Greek origin, we can say that it is never difficult to trace 
when elements of it are found embedded in a native medium. 
Concerning (2), demoniac medicine, the position is more 
complicated. Beside the original stratum of demonism in 
Greek medicine, which was presumably drawn more or 
less directly from Babylonian sources, much new belief 
concerning demons had been developed in the Greek 
system by Christianity, and had been propagated from an 
early date by the spread of that religion in the West. The 
pathology of the New Testament is mainly demonic and 
many of the miracles of healing are exorcisms. There 
were devils of blindness, dumbness, madness, and epilepsy, 
and Luke the physician regarded the ‘ great fever’ of 
Simon’s wife’s mother in the light of a demon, for Jesus, he 
says, ‘ stood over her and rebuked the fever; and it left 
her.’ So also the infirmities of Mary Magdalene were of 
the nature of seven evil spirits—the demons of early Chris- 
tianity, like those of the Mesopotamian system, were often 
grouped in sevens—and Peter considered that all those 
whom Jesus healed had been ‘ oppressed of the Devil.’ 
The final end of disease is itself a demon’s work, since the 
inspirer of sin is indirectly the author of death, the last 
enemy that shall be destroyed. 

So for the fathers of the Church disease was largely the 
work of demons. Of some importance for our purpose 
are the views of Irenaeus (2nd century A.D.) as preserving 
a record of that early Gallic Christianity which may be sup- 
posed to have first influenced the British Isles. He ac- 
knowledges the antiquity and effectiveness of exorcisms 
other than Christian, and thus prepares us for the pagan 


158 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


survivals in our own deeply Christianized material. In 
writings of Anglo-Saxon origin we have to set off Christo- 
logical protective charms, such as the Lorica prayer or litur- 
gical exorcisms in the divine name of the creaturae of water, 
honey, bread, oil, &c., of liturgical works, against the pagan 
spells of the Leechdoms. 

Now since exorcism proper had no place in the 
Teutonic system, any protective charms, words of power, 
and exorcistic formulae designed to expel or to prevent the 
entrance of the demon, encountered in an Anglo-Saxon 
setting, must surely be of foreign origin though not neces- 
sarily of foreign form. We do encounter, however, Anglo- 
Saxon magical processes designed to remove, not indeed 
the demon himself, but the materies morli projected into 
the body by supernatural beings—in other words formulae 
for the extraction of the elf-shot. 


§ 5. Celtic Magic 


The Celtic influence in the Anglo-Saxon material is 
elusive and yet pervasive, but the difficulty of tracing it 
may be a result of the common heritage of the two cultures 
and the common external influences to which they were 
both subjected. Nevertheless, clear cases of the definite 
incursion of the Celtic magic into the Anglo-Saxon system 
can be adduced ; these may be roughly classed according 
as they are derived from (a) Celtic magic proper, or from 
(5) that form of Celtic magic which filters through the 
peculiar Hisperic medium. 

(a) True Celtic magic in the Leechdoms is betrayed 
by a number of Celtic words and phrases used as charms. 
From such phrases, however, we can argue no intimate 
contact between the two peoples. A somewhat closer 
connexion is suggested, however, by the use of the so-called 
‘ Circle of Columcille.’ The legend of the origin of this 
magical figure is contained in the Irish life of the Saint by 
Manus O’Donnell composed in 1532. 

‘On a time Ethne the mother of Columcille was in the 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 159 


place called Gartan, and it was the night before Columcille 
was born, and their appeared a fair youth in shining raiment, 
and he said she should bring forth on the morrow the son 
that was promised her to bear. And he told her there 
was a broad flagstone in the lake, to the south of the place 
where she was... . And he told her to let bring that flag- 


yf 


Fics. 56 and 57.—Two Early Celtic Stone Crosses. Photographed by the late Mr, 
Romilly Allen in County Donegal. The cross to the left is in Glen Columcille, 
that to the right in a neighbouring glen. 


stone to a certain place . . . and that thereon should God 
will the child to be brought forth of her. 

‘“ In what manner shall I get the flagstone, seeing it 
is under a lake,” saith she, “‘ or whereby shall I know it 
from other flagstones ? ” 

‘“ Thou shalt find it floating on the bosom of the lake,” 
saith he. ; 

‘And Ethne found the flagstone on the morrow as it 


160 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


had been told her, and she let bring it from the foresaid 
place. And albeit it floated on the surface of the lake, and 
Ethne’s folk brought it away with them without labour, 
yet certain it is that it were a task for thirty men to bring it 
from the lake to the place where it is to-day... . 

‘ And it befell that the foresaid flagstone was under him 
at his birth, and the child rested him crosswise thereon, 
and the flagstone opened for him in such wise that it left 
a place for him therein. And the figure of that cross 1s on 
that stone from that time to this day. And that flagstone 
remaineth in that place for working of marvels and wonders.’ 3 

Irish archaeologists have frequently described a type of 
large flat stone, into the surface of which there has been 
cut in remote antiquity a design consisting primarily of a 
cross surrounded by a circle. A fine specimen of this type 
of Celtic monument is known from the glen to which 
Columcille’s name is still attached [Figs. 56 and 57]. ‘To such 
stones magical powers were attached and their use passed 
over tothe English. In an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the 
eleventh century, over the figure of a circle with a cross 
inscribed within it [Fig. 58] we read : 


MS. Cott, Vit. E. XvIIl, FO. 13 v. 


Pis is sancte columcille circul 
Writ pisne circul mid pines cnifes 
orde on anum mealm stane 7 sleah 
genne stacan on middan pam ymb- 
hagan. 7 lege pone stane on 
uppan han stacan pet he beo 
eall under eordan. butan pam ge- 
writenan. 


This is the circle of Saint Colum- 
cille. Inscribe this circle with the 
point of thy knife on a soft stone 
& strike a stake into the middle 
of the bee-enclosure, & lay the 
stone above the stake so that it 
is all under ground except that 
which is inscribed. 


The stake was presumably to prevent the stone sinking 
and the stone thus laid was used for charming bees, but its 


form and title betray its Irish affinities. 


In the manuscript, 


however, the resemblance to the circle of Petosiris has 


1 Manus O’Donnell’s Life of Columcille, from version of MS. Rawlinson, 
B 514, by A. O’Keller and C. Schoepperle, Illinois, 1918. 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 161 


tempted the scribe to write the days of the moon upon it 
after the manner of the Greek device [Figs. 54 and 6s]. 
Columcille seems to have kept his hold on English magic. 
In a fifteenth-century English Book of Devotions is this 
charm, which surely plumbs the depths of mental imbecility 
and bad grammar: ‘ If a house is on fire stand between 


cont 
apefut 
falur {inc 
Kancorda 


TAS IV 90192- 
(Pie Sri ee ee ke ao 


“1721s XV IL 


"VAUL XI Ms MOXY IYI 


eorum.-Sah 


Vs XY. rY- 
Vie XVEL exvVly 
VXs Vittles 


Fic. 58.—The Circle of Columcille. From an Anglo-Saxon MS. of the eleventh century. 
(Cott. Vit. E. xviii, fo. 13 v., slightly restored.) 


the part that is burning and the part that is not and say 
these verses, and the fire will immediately flicker out : 


Sancte columbkille 
Remove mala flamma ille 
Atque columbkillus 
Preserve ab igne domus.’ 
(MS. App. 37787) 


(5) Hisperic. The literature of Hisperic origin is more 
easily traceable in the English manuscripts than the pure 
Celtic magic. This Hisperic literature is of so peculiar 

II 


162 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


a character that we must devote a few lines to a general 
discussion of it. 

For the last half-century philogists have been interested 
and puzzled by a most curious group of early documents 
of Irish or English origin. The longest of these and in 
many respects the most striking is a rough metrical compo- 
sition known as the Hisperica Famina, a very peculiar work 
that has given its name to what is almost a special language 


and literature. This language and literature we have 


already discussed (p. 117 ff.). 

The Hisperic authors were men of Celtic speech who 
had access to Anglo-Saxon sources, and they did not 
hesitate to introduce words of Celtic and English origin 
into their writings. Thus arose a jargon which was 
substantially a special language. The bounds in space 
and time within which this peculiar medium flourished 
are not altogether certain. The centre of activity was 


probably in Ireland, though Wales, Cornwall, and possibly — 


even Brittany influenced the product. It was exclusively 
a literary language, and thus its influence extended from 
the Celtic peoples to the Anglo-Saxon monasteries which 
lay under a cultural debt to their more anciently Chris- 
tianized neighbours. 

The period during which the Hisperic language flourished 
can be roughly stated as the seventh century. It may have 
been practised for fifty or a hundred years before then, 
and there is one belated document—copied no doubt for 
its supposed magical value—of the sixteenth century. There 
is good evidence, however, that the language was still 
studied and understood in England as late as the tenth 
century, since Hisperic words are included in Anglo-Saxon 
glossaries of that period. ‘The most important manu- 
scripts of the literature are, however, of the eighth or ninth 
century, and they are mostly in the ‘ insular’ script. 

Certain Hisperic documents, and especially that known as 
the Lorica of Gildas the Briton (p. 122 ff.), were used as 


charms by the Anglo-Saxon speaking tribes. TheLoricaisin — o 


-”- 


Fie. 59.—SNAKE AND SCORPION 
FIGHTING 


From MS. Bibl. Nat., La#. 6862, tenth 
century. Compare Plate III. 


Fic. 60.— ARTEMISIA’ (ARTEMISIA PONTICA) 
From MS. Bibl. Nat., Laz. 6862, tenth century. Compare Plate IV. 


There can be no doubt that the figures of the Anglo-Saxon 
herbal are copied from a continental MS. The two figures here 
shown from a Latin MS. written in France in the tenth century 
may be compared to Plates III and IV, taken from a slightly later 
Anglo-Saxon MS. 


162] 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 163 


essence an incantation enumerating all the parts of the 
body in turn and calling down the blessing and protection 
of heaven on each, the whole being placed in the form 
of a passionate and somewhat unbalanced invocation (see 
Essay III, p. 111). Such invocations shade off into the 
more ordinary liturgical material of the type encountered 
in the chapter De exorcizandis obsessis a daemonis, of the 
Rituale Romanum. An intermediate stage, still betraying 
strong Celtic influence, is represented by a conjuration, in 
corrupt Latin uttered as a preservative against pestilence, 
part of which may be thus translated : 


MS. Hartey 585, FO. 191 

In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen. May the Saviour 
help [names]. We [names] ought to give thanks to the God of Heaven, 
the King of Kings, and to beseech him that, he ward off from us [names] 
the plague of this pest... . Preserve and defend us [names] from the 
agony of the Igniculum (St. Anthony’s fire, Erysipelas) and from the power 
of the Variola (? Measles) and protect us from the danger of death. Free 
us [names] from the most evil languors and dangers of this season, amen. 
brigitarum dricillarum tuarum malint uoarline dearnabda murde murrunice 
domur brio rubebroht. Séé rehhoc. & scé ehwalde. & séé cassiane. & Scé 
germane. & scé sigismundi regis gescyldad me wid %a laban poccas 7 wid 
ealle yfelu. amen. [Saint Rehhoc, Saint Ehwald, Saint Cassian, Saint 
German, and Saint Sigmund the king protect me against the loathed 
pocks and against all ills. Amen.] 


The italicized sentence is corrupt Irish and is said to 
contain the equivalent of Immaculate Maid of Heaven, 
Mary of God. Whether this be so or no, the saints mentioned 
are certainly, in the main, a Celtic group. Brigita is 
Bridget. Sanctus Rehhoc is the Celtic Rioc, who is 
perhaps identical with Riaghail and Regulus the legendary 
founder of St. Andrews (? eighth century). Sanctus Sig- 
mundus rex was the son of Gundebald, King of Burgundy ; 
he was converted from Arianism in 515 and became king 
in 516. Sanctus Germanus (378 ?-428) was Bishop of 
Auxerre and missionary to Britain; he had a high reputa- 
tion for his power over demons, and there are many Celtic 
stories of him. Sanctus Cassianus is perhaps the Alexan- 


164 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


drian of that name who became Bishop of Autun, and died 
in 355. Sanctus Ehwaldus is probably one of the Hewalds 
(Edwald), ‘ two priests of the English nation who had long 
lived in Ireland for the sake of the eternal inheritance ’ 
(Bede) ; they were martyred in the seventh century 


§ 6. Southern Plant-Lore 

Of all the elements in the Anglo-Saxon medical system, 
by far the most attractive is the plant-lore. The English 
were a people who early exhibited some power in the 
observation of nature and considerable artistic skill, but their 
achievements in these matters were greatly hampered by 
the respect paid by them to the written records of a higher 
civilization. ‘Thus the Early English texts containing 
descriptions of plants are merely bad copies or worse 
translations of works which had existed in Latin dress from 
at least as early as the seventh century, and in these no new 
or original element can be expected. But when we turn to 
the figures with which these herbals are illustrated we are 
met with an entirely new and very interesting series of 
phenomena. Indeed, the story of plant representation 
throughout early barbarian Europe is a peculiar and in 
many ways an isolated development which cannot easily 
be fitted into the general account of the history of art, and 
for this there is a special reason. Most expressions of the 
mediaeval artistic spirit were prepared only with an eye 
to the emotions that they raised, but in the case of the 
illustrations to herbals there was a definite utilitarian object. 
As, however, we devote a special essay to the descent of the 
herbal texts and figures, we need not deal with it further 
here. (See Essay V, p. 168, Plates III-IV and Figs. 59-64.) 


§ 7. Byzantine Magic and Theurgy 
Instances of Byzantine theurgy occur scattered through- 
out Anglo-Saxon writings. Sometimes there is a use of 


1 The relationship of Irish and English magic has recently been discussed by the 
author’s pupil Dr. W. Bonser in a valuable article in Fo/k-lore, vol. xxxvii., 
December 1927. See also his article on Elf-shot, December 1926. 


bys +3 a et Tue ts A. Tore 1 org 7 
I ee ee es ee a eg ee Oe 


Oe ee ee Oe ae ee ee ye ee 


ry 


Pitre si Sule) ete Saute ana : - ‘ ‘ 


Ce ee 


ay Reena 9 


‘ragora eft 


IrAdICeN 


diner | ee VAIDaram: 

ttlignens a conerteiy 

sa ty } [ae 

tur ence eran niger:< 

Fic. 61.—Additional 21115, Italian work- Frc. 62,—Pierpont Morgan MS., Byzan- 
manship, fifteenth century. tine workmanship, tenth century. 


TVA Mu i 


| Jee ae 
ee 
iy ef lsannn min wun 


Fic. 63.—Italian printed work, Fic. 64.—Cotton Vitellius C. iii., Anglo- 
1484 A.D. Saxon workmanship, about 1050, 


Fics. 61-64.—FIGURES OF MANDRAKES, SHOWING THE CLOSE SIMI- 
LARITY OF THE TRADITIONAL MODES OF DRAWING THESE FIGURES, 
Figs. 63 and 64 ARE ESPECIALLY NEARLY RELATED DESPITE THEIR 


SEPARATION IN TIME. 


164] 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 165 


Greek script in the writing of a word of power, but there is 
no case where such a charm clearly involves a knowledge of 
the Greek language. These charms are thus comparable 
to the piece of magic of Sir John Holt quoted above 
(p. 136). 

Among the most striking of these Byzantine tags is per- 
haps the curious charm used to stop intractable haemorrhage 
which is found in several eleventh and twelfth-century 
manuscripts (e.g. St. John’s College, Oxford, XVII and 
Durham Cathedral, Hunter 100). This charm consisted 
of the following words, which had to be written on the part 
affected or else worn as a periapt : 


Stomen calcos stomen meta fofu. 


The sentence is merely a corrupted passage from the 
Greek Liturgy of St. Chrysostom : 


orapev KadOs' ordpev pera bdGov. 
Let us stand seemly, let us stand in awe. 


These words, coming in the most solemn part of the 
service before the elevation of the elements, would be 
regarded with special reverence, and thus easily pass over 
with magic significance into the practice of a people of lower 
culture. The phrase is still used as a charm by Macedonian 
peasants. 

A second Greek liturgical passage put to an exorcistic 
use is encountered in an eighth-century English manuscript 
and runs as follows : 


MS. Royat 2 A. xx, FO. 45 v. 


Eulogumen . patera . cae yo . cae agion . pneuma . cae nym . cae 
la . cae iseonas . nenon amin . adiuro te satanae diabulus aelfae . per 
dominum uiuum ac uerum . et per trementem diem iudicii ut refugiatur 
ab homine illo qui abeat hunc aepistolam scriptum secum in nomine 
dei patris et filii et spiritus sancti. 


The Greek in this passage is an attempt to transliterate 
the doxology eddoyodpev matépa Kat vidv Kal aylov TVEdLa 
Kat vov Kal det Kat eis aiavas aiover apyv. ‘The italicized 


166 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


word e@lfa is the elf who is equated with Satan, a natural 
and common priestly identification. 

The same manuscript gives us also a charm to arrest 
haemorrhage which yields us a hint as to the route by which 
such Greek liturgical material may have reached England. 
The charm runs as follows : 


MS. Roya 2 A. Xx, FO. 49 v. 


Per illorum uenas cui siccato dominico lauante coniuro sta. ... In 
nomine sanctae trinitatis atque omnium sanctorum ad sanguinem restrin- 
gendum scribis hoc COMAPTA OCOTMA CTYTONTOEMA EKTYTOTIO 
Sea Beronice libera me de sanguinibus Deus Deus salutis meae 
AMICO CAPAINOPO #1¢IPON. 


The underlined Greek words are the equivalent of 
orvyobv To alua ék Tod Tomov. Beronice or Veronica is 
the traditional name of the woman who was healed of the 
issue of blood, and the herb Veronica, also called Betonica 
in the herbals, our Betony, was used to stop haemorrhage. 
The gibberish Greek words are similar to words used for 
a like purpose by Marcellus Empiricus of Bordeaux. 

Another instance of the importance attached to Greek 
words is yielded by the occurrence of the Greek script 
in some of the Anglo-Saxon specimens of the Circle of 
Petosiris [Fig. 65]. ‘These, being used to foretell the life or 
death of the patient, would easily become invested with a 
special solemn importance. The corruptness of the Greek 
of some of these circles is almost incredible. 


§ 8. Pagan Roman Spells 


Lastly, it is interesting to observe that the Latin herbal, 
being copied ultimately from Pagan Roman sources, con- 
tained certain Pagan Roman spells which are known to 
occur also in certain early Continental manuscripts, of 
which the earliest dates from the seventh century. It 
is very remarkable that these should have survived in their 
full and unexpurgated heathenism in herbals of twelfth- 
and even thirteenth-century English workmanship. We 


EARLY ENGLISH MAGIC AND MEDICINE 167 


_ terminate our discussion with a translation of one of these 
conjurations. 


MS. Harvey 1585, FF. 12 v.-13 R. 


Earth, divine goddess, Mother Nature, who generatest all things and 
bringest forth anew the sun which thou hast given to the nations ; Guar- 
dian of sky and sea and of all gods and powers; through thy power all 
nature falls silent and then sinks in sleep. And again thou bringest back 
the light and chasest away night, and yet again thou coverest us most 


OPWL Zone:k 


NX 


Fic. 65.—Circle of Petosiris with Greek Script. From MS. St. John’s College, 
Oxford, 17 (fo. 8 r.), written at Ramsey about 1110. 


securely with thy shades. Thou dost contain chaos infinite, yea and 
winds and showers and storms. Thou sendest them out when thou wilt 
and causest the seas to roar ; thou chasest away the sun and arousest the 
storm. Again when thou wilt thou sendest forth the joyous day and givest 
the nourishment of life with thy eternal surety. And when the soul departs 
to thee we return. Thou indeed art duly called great Mother of the gods ; 
thou conquerest by thy divine name. Thou art the source of the strength 
of nations and of gods, without thee nothing can be brought to perfection 
or be born ; thou art great, queen of the gods. Goddess! I adore thee as 
divine ; I call upon thy name ; be pleased to grant that which I ask thee, 
so shall I give thanks to thee, goddess, with due faith. 


V 


EARLY HERBALS 


A Herpat is a collection of descriptions of plants usually 


Fic. 66.—Representation of 
branch with leaves scratched 
in Palaeolithic times on a piece 
of reindeer horn from Arcy- 
sut-Cute, Dep. Yonne, France. 
Thete are but few Palaeolithic 
representations of plants and 
of them this is, perhaps, the 
best. 


put together for medical pur- 
poses. The term is_ perhaps 
nowadays used most frequently in 
connexion with the finely illustrated — 
works produced by the ‘ fathers of 
botany ’ in the fifteenth, sixteenth, 
and seventeenth centuries. Behind 
the tradition they represent, how- 
ever, are a host of manuscript works 
equally entitled to be described as 
herbals. These take us back into 
remote antiquity and their origins 
must be sought in the history of 
man. 

Yet despite the antiquity of the 
herbal tradition it is truly remark- 
able at what a late stage in his 
development man first began to 
observe plants closely. Palaeolithic 
man has left us many samples of 
his artistic skill. Indeed, like his 
modern successor the diminutive 
Bushman, who is also an expert in 
the portrayal of animal life, palaeo- 
lithic man was often an artist to 


the finger-tips. Yet with all his 


powers he seems always to have neglected the portrayal of 
plants. The whole repertory of palaeolithic art may be 


EARLY HERBALS 169 


searched through without finding a representation of a 
plant the species of which can be recognized [Fig. 66]. 

The reason for this neglect may be sought in the artist’s 
motive. It is believed that these paintings were of a 
magical character ; by representing the forms of animals 


m : aaeys 
~ele's 
——_-——" | 


BY 


ena 5 
SEXD 
VAN 7 
BAIN 

WANS 


— a, 
Ly) 
Z 

4 


PASTING 
WE 


> 
SS 
\ 
4) 


g 
Y 


= 


Y 
cH 


CE 


Mi ij 


AM 


SL 


— 


Ni 


() 


h A 


WE5 


Fic, 67.—Pre-dynastic Egyptian palette of a palm-tree flanked on either side by a 
Gerunak gazelle. Above hovers a vulture. The figure is put together from two 
fragments, one in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and the other at the British 


Museum. 


on the walls of his cave the hunter thought to bring the 
animals themselves within his power. The plant, since 
it needed no hunting, was neglected by the artist. It is at 
least noteworthy that not until we reach a time and a 
country where man is beginning to domesticate plants and 
is becoming more dependent on them for his food, do we 


170 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


encounter any adequate representation of vegetable life. 

The earliest figure of a recognizable species of plant is 
carved by a pre-dynastic Egyptian on a piece of slate and 
represents a rudely cut palm-tree [Fig. 67]. ‘The valley 
of the Nile is one of the earliest sites of tillage—the art 
that first freed man from dependence on the mere natural 
fertility of the country. The view has been advanced 
that the Nile valley is the native home of barley, and that 
barley was the first cereal to be cultivated. It is therefore 
significant that on monuments of even the first Egyptian 


Fics. 68 and 69.—Egyptian carvings, representing cereals, from 
a tomb of the first dynasty at Abydos. 


dynasty some form of bearded cereal is clearly figured 
[Figs. 68 and 69]. 

The history of Egyptian art as a whole, however, repeats 
the history of palaeolithic art in its relative backwardness 
in the correct rendering of plants. Egyptian art reached 
its finest development in the fourth dynasty. Egyptian 
artists of that period have seldom been excelled in human 
portraiture, and reached a high standard in the rendering 
of the moving bodies of animals, but from this artistic 
development botanical delineation gained very little. This 
is remarkable when we consider certain other develop- 
ments of Egyptian activity. ‘The Egyptians indeed never 


PLATE VIII 


*PEONIA ’ = OROBUS SP. 


From a Herbal written at Bury St. Edmunds 
about 1120 (Bodley 130). See p. 188. 


170] 


s 


EARLY HERBALS 171 


reached the philosophical level in which men consciously 
seek to draw new general laws from co-ordinated observa- 
tion of nature. ‘They did, however, cultivate the ‘ collector’s 
instinct,’ which may be regarded as an earlier and more 
primitive stage in the progress of the human mind towards 
science and is the stage represented by the herbal. In 
the eighteenth dynasty, about 1500 B.c., Thothmes III 
sent out an expedition to Syria which brought back with 
it a number of new and strange plants. The figures of 
these plants were sculptured on the walls of Karnak, where 
they may be seen to this day [Fig. 70]. They are diagram- 
matic to a degree and few can be actually identified. On 
them, however, is an inscription which may be translated 
thus : 


Year 25 of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Living for Ever. 
Plants which His Majesty found in the country of Syria. All plants 
that grow, all goodly flowers that are in the Divine Land (i.e. country 
east of Egypt) . . . His Majesty saith, ‘ As I live, all these plants exist 
in very truth ; there is not a line of falsehood among them. My Majesty 
hath wrought this to cause them to be before my father Amon, in this 
great hall for ever and ever.’ 


Is not this perpetuation the motive of the herbal, and 
have we not here a herbalin stone? It was among another 
people, however, that the more permanent herbal tradition 
arose. ‘The herbal tradition that we inherit comes to us from 
Greece. 

The three great influences that converged on the Greeks, 
those spoiled darlings of history, were the culture of 
Egypt, of Mesopotamia, and of the Minoan peoples. The 
arts of Mesopotamia and of Crete, so far as plants are 
concerned, go through much the same history that we have 
traced in Egypt. Nor is the great art of the Greeks them- 
selves very different in relation to our subject. In Greek 
art of the classical age we find no worthy representations 
of vegetable life. Plants are freely used for design and 
woven into the motives of patterns, but living and growing 
plants are hardly ever found. The triumphs of Greek art 


172 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE ee 


are to be found in the treatment, and especially the idealiza- i” 
tion, of the human form. When the Greek artist treats  __ 


Fic. 7o.—Plant representations from the ‘ Syrian garden’ of Thothmes II 
on his temple at Karnak. Gourds, a heath, a lotus, two irises, a seedling arum, 
and other plants and parts of plants may be distinguished. 


animals, he treats them in relation to man. Plants and 
inorganic nature he almost entirely neglects. Greek science, 
Greek philosophy, but most of all Greek art was, according 
to our ideas, strangely anthropocentric. | 


EARLY HERBALS 173 


If we consider (says Plato in the Critias) the works of the painter, 
we shall see that we are satisfied with one who is able in any degree to 
imitate the earth, its mountains, rivers, and woods, and the universe, 
and the things that are and move therein. Knowing nothing precise 
about such matters, we do not examine or analyse the paintings. All 
that we ask is a sort of indistinct and deceptive mode of shadowing 
them forth. But when our artist treats the human form we are quick 
to find faults, and our familiar knowledge makes us severe judges of one 
who does not render every point exactly. 


At a very early date the Greeks brought the art of 
medicine within the range of the sciences, and thus pro- 
vided the theme for the herbal. We have a number of 
Greek medical works of the fifth and fourth centuries 
before the Christian era in the so-called Hippocratic Collec- 
tion. From that group of works modern investigators 
have gathered a list of between three and four hundred 
plants. It is remarkable that no contemporary ancient 
author seems to have thought of doing this. It was not 
until towards the end of the Hippocratic period that the 
first Greek herbal was put together. 

The author of this first Greek herbal was Diocles of 
Carystus in Euboeia. He practised in Athens with 
enormous reputation in the first half of the fourth century 
B.C., and is believed to have influenced Aristotle deeply. 
His book on plants has unfortunately disappeared even 
more completely than his other works. We know only 
enough of it to say that it was a systematic treatise in 
which short descriptions of plants and their habitats were 
followed by an account of their uses in medicine. 

In the period in which Diocles worked, the tiny inde- 
pendent States of Greece were beginning to be over- 
shadowed by the growing power of Macedon. The 
generation which followed saw the profound modification 
of the Greek outlook that Alexander’s career was to bring. 
Starting across Asia Minor and penetrating to the remotest 
recesses of Syria and Egypt, of Babylonia, Persia, Media, 
Turkestan to Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and reaching the 


174 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Punjab, he and his followers not only found themselves in | 


contact with strange new forms, but beheld completely 
new regions of plant geography of which previous genera- 
tions had not dreamed. 


The campaigns of Alexander were something far more 


than mere manceuvres of conquest. They were carried 
on with all the scientific resources of the day. The 
navy especially, then as now the most scientific branch of 
the fighting force, was active in collecting such data, and 
much of the information concerning foreign plants, found 
in the pages of later Greek botanists, was taken from these 
naval records. Chief among Alexander’s admirals was 
Nearchus, who led the fleet from the mouth of the Indus, 
near Karachi, along the Baluchistan coast to Hormuz in 
the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and then up the eastern 
side to the head of the Gulf. Fragments of an account of 
this journey by Nearchus himself contain admirable 
descriptions of the banyan tree or Indian fig, of the various 


species of mangrove along the coast, of the cotton plant — 


found in the islands of the Gulf, and of the great spiny 
Euphorbias of the Baluchistan wastes. Another expedition 
under Androsthenes explored Bahrein on the western 
side of the Gulf, and its leader prepared a monograph 
of his voyage which was largely devoted to botanical 


topics. Thus the Alexandrian expeditions brought to 


Greece a wealth of the botanical material out of which a 
herbal might be built. | 


While the conquests of Alexander were in progress, | 


Aristotle, himself an admirable naturalist, found time 


among his philosophical labours to make a complete sketch 
of organic nature containing a section devoted to plants. 
This Aristotelian treatise on plants has disappeared, but — 


by way of compensation we have works by Aristotle’s 
pupil, Theophrastus of Eresus, sometimes spoken of as 
the ‘ father of botany.’ They contain descriptions of a 


large number of plants, native and foreign, with accounts = 


of their uses, and these accounts may therefore be regarded 


PLATE IX 


“MERCURY’ BRINGS THE HERB ELECTROPION TO 
“HOMER ’ 


From an Anglo-Norman Herbal of the thirteenth century (Ashmole 
1462). See p. 191. 
174] 


EARLY HERBALS 175 


as making up a herbal—though they are in fact also much 
more. The works of Theophrastus were among the Greek 
sources of the later herbals. They were the best, but not 
the only sources. 

Although uncivilized peoples do not as a rule observe 
plants closely, yet at an early cultural stage they begin to 
employ them for the treatment of disease. N early all 
peoples, ancient or modern, seem to have developed some- 
thing of a medical herb-lore, frequently mixed with much 
magical material. The recipients of this traditional herb- 
lore among the Greeks were the so-called rhizotomists. 
These, as a class, were ignorant men corresponding in a 
measure to our herbalists. They were very superstitious 
and practised a complex ritual in the gathering of their 
drugs, as still do many people on the same cultural level. 
Fragments of this ritual have survived, and we can detect 
in it ceremonies similar to those recorded in mediaeval 
herbals and leech-books and _ still closely followed by 
European peasants. The profession and the tradition of 
the rhizotomists extended from Greek into mediaeval and 
€ven to modern times, and they and their work are not 
infrequently illustrated in the manuscripts and early 
printed books [Fig. 71]. Of their practices Theophrastus 
has much to tell us. 

The herbal as we know it was not yet formed. Theo- 
phrastus was one of its remotest—and its best—sources, 
but the works of Theophrastus were scientific treatises 
which endeavoured to set forth a real system of plants. 
The key-note of the herbal proper, however, is its practical 
character : that vague and foolish word with which ignorant 
and unpractical people have been accustomed in all ages 
to hide the nakedness of their minds. The earliest collec- 
tion of this sort that we have is perhaps the Alexipharmaca 
of Nicander, written in the century following Theophrastus. 
It is a wretched production—in spite of the praise of 
Cicero—ill-written and obscure, with nothing poetic about 
it save its form. It deals with a number of poisons and 


176 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


their antidotes, mostly of a vegetable character, and 


Fic. 71.—Rhizotomists gathering plants upon a mountain. From a fifteenth- 
century drawing in a MS. now destroyed. Restored from P. Giacosa, Magistri 
Salernitani, Turin, 1901. 


savours far more of the rhizotomists and their magical 
practices than of the scientific Theophrastus. 


EARLY HERBALS 177 


The effective source for the surviving and viable tradi- 
tion of the illustrated herbal is, however, to be sought a 
little later in the first century before the Christian era. 
It is the work of the rhizotomist Crateuas, one of the 
most intelligent and instructed of his class, who occupied 
himself not only with collecting but also in describing and 


Fic. 73.—Aristolochia 


Fic, 72.—Adonis aestivalis, from a_ sixth- pallida, from a sixth-cen- 
century copy of a drawing, now lost, by tuty copy of a drawing, 
Crateuas (first century B.c.). now lost, by Crateuas. 


Contrast Fig. 79, 


drawing plants. He is thus the father of the department 
of plant illustration. Of the work of Crateuas, who was 
the attendant of Mithridates VI of Parthia (reigned 111-64 
B.C.), fragments have survived. By a lucky chance copies 
of his actual drawings, not very remote from second- 
hand, have come down to us, so that we can form a pretty 
good idea of the general character of his work [Figs. 72-4]. 
I2 


178 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


In the first century of the Christian era appeared a 
number of works, each of which had its influence in shaping — 
the herbals of the Middle Ages that were to follow. One 
was by Pamphilus, a Greek physician, who practised in 
Rome and wrote a work on plants which, for the first 
time, was arranged in alphabetical order, a device a 
commonly adopted in later herbals. If Galen is just in a 
his criticisms, it resembled later herbals in several other 4 
respects, for he tells us that Pamphilus described plants 
which he had never seen, and mingled much absurd and. 


superstitious matter 
Aa A with his imperfect des- 
& = criptions. 
The art of plant 
illustration founded by 
SS Crateuas was extended 
S if not developed during 
the first century of the 
Christianera. This ex- 
tension was encouraged 
by the appearance of 
several botanical works _ 
Fic. 74.—Asarum Europacum, from a sixth- among which Pliny’s 
so copy of adrawing, now lost, by Crateuas /V, atural History and 
oe eee Dioscorides’ Materia 
Medica must be especially mentioned. 7 
In Pliny we have a collection of current views on the 
nature, origin, and uses of plants, such as we might expect 
from an honest, industrious, and gullible gentleman 
devoid of critical or scientific skill. Pliny is the compiler 
par excellence, the learned collector who will put down 
anything he is told or can read, without verification. 
Scientifically the work is therefore worthless. Yet it was 
not only the actual basis of later herbals but also for 
centuries a main conduit of the ancient teaching and 
observations on natural history. Read throughout the 
ages, alike in the darkest as in the more enlightened periods, 


EARLY HERBALS 179 


copied and re-copied, translated, commented on, extracted 
and abridged, a large part of Pliny’s work has gradually 
passed into folk-keeping, so that through his agency the 
gipsy fortune-teller of to-day is still reciting garbled 


AlOCKO PIAHC 
| Cay. Ge 


Fic. 73.—Scene traced from a miniature of the Juliana Anicia Codex, written a.p. 512. 
The nymph Discovery (Evpeoic) presents a mandrake to the physician Dioscorides. The mandrake 
is still tethered to the hound whose life is sacrificed to obtain it. 
versions of the formulae that Pliny himself took from works 
of Aristotle and Hippocrates, written two and a half 
millennia ago (compare p. 12 ff.). 

The fate of Dioscorides (flourished A.D. 60) has been 
not dissimilar, His work On Materia Medica is a series 


180 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


of short accounts of plants and their uses, often provided 


with terse descriptions which sometimes deal with habits 
and habitats. It has been one of the most influential 
botanical treatises ever pennec. [Illustrated Latin transla- 4 


tions of Dioscorides were early in use. A Latin work 
based on him, similarly illustrated, but bearing the name 
of Apuleius, is one of the commonest mediaeval botanical 
documents. After the Revival of Learning Dioscorides 


1 Pa ne) eae ee ee a. 


; 


A? 


Fic. 76.—Ricinus communis. Young castor Fic. 77.—Young bean plant, from 
oil plant, from Juliana Anicia Codex. Juliana Anicia Codex. 


continued to attract an immense amount of philological 
and botanical ability, and scores of editions of his works, 
many of them nobly illustrated, poured from the presses. 
The work decided the general form of every ancient and 
most modern pharmacopoeias, both Oriental and Occidental. 
Dioscorides practically determined modern plant nomen- 
clature both popular and scientific—he is the main source 
of the herbals. 

Translated into nearly every language, from Anglo- 
Saxon and Provengal to Persian and Hebrew, appearing in 


ey > cial 
ee ee eee ee m4 


EARLY HERBALS 181 


innumerable beautifully illuminated manuscripts, some of 
which are among the fairest treasures of the great national 
libraries, Dioscorides, the drug-monger, appealed to 
scholasticized minds for centuries. One of the earliest 
datable Greek codices in existence is a glorious illustrated 
volume of Dioscorides, written in capitals, the chief 
adornment of what was once the Royal Library of Vienna. 
This manuscript was thought worthy to form a wedding 
gift for the lady Juliana Anicia, the daughter of Anicius 
Olybrius, Emperor of the 
West in 472, and of his 
wife Placidia, herself the 
daughter of Valentinian 
III. The Juliana Anicia 
manuscript forms a land- 
mark not only in the 
history of botany in 
general and the herbal in 
particular, but also in the 
history of art. It is the 
earliest and also the finest 
of the Greek herbals 
[Figs. 75-8]. ly 

There are several frag- iS : 
ments of earlier Greek 

‘ Fic, 78.—Geranium molle, from Juliana 

herbals written on papy- Aistein Codew: 
rus. They show that 
long before the Juliana Anicia manuscript was prepared 
the art of plant painting had begun to deteriorate. The 
later history of the Greek herbal is one of yet further 
decay. A number of illustrated Greek herbals are known, 
extending down to the present century. They all tell 
the same tale of copying not even exact enough to be 
called slavish. At each remove the plants become less 
like their originals, until they are unrecognizable save by 
one who has studied the course of their tradition. So 
far as the Greek world is concerned the evolution 


182 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


of the herbal is closed with the Juliana Anicia manu- 
script. - = 

One interesting branch was, however, given off by the 
Greek herbal tradition in its decline. As the general 
character of the Greek mind deteriorated, such science as 
survived passed into the hands of the various Oriental 
peoples who went to make up the Byzantine Empire. Of 
these the Nestorian Christians entered most freely into 
medical studies and turned into Syriac the more popular 
of the Greek medical works. In after centuries, when the 
whole of the Near East came under the power of Islam, it 
was from these Nestorians that medical knowledge mainly 
radiated. First Gondisapur and then Baghdad became the 
centre of their activities, and at the last centre most of 
the work of translation of Greek wisdom was accomplished. 
It was thus that Dioscorides passed into Arabic and later 
into Persian. The figures of the plants of the Greek 
Dioscorides tradition, taken mostly from the Mediterranean 
littoral, were however useless to the Oriental reader. New 
figures were prepared and items were added. A new 
tradition thus arose which continues to this day. ~ 

The main line of herbal development, that of Western 
Europe, which we have now to consider, has shown far 
greater vitality than the original Greek stock from which 
it sprang. The chief interest of the Western herbal 
depends on the history of the art which it embodies. An 
understanding of the development of any form of Western 
art in the first centuries of the Christian era depends on the 
realization of the early differentiation of the outlook of 
East and West within the Roman Empire. To the political 
historian the breach between the Eastern and the Western 
Empire is marked by certain important events, such as 
the separation of the Empire into an Eastern and a Western 
realm in 364, or its final division in 395. To the student 
of cultural history these events are only the expression of 
tendencies which lay much deeper and existed long before — 


their political results declared themselves. Those differ- . 


PLATE X 


A CENTAUR HOLDS THE PLANT CENTAURY 


From an Anglo-Norman Herbal of the thirteenth century 


(Ashmole 1462). See p. 191. 
182] 


EARLY HERBALS 183 


ences are expressed in the contrast between the art of the 
Fast and that of the West. 

The classical art of Greece, with its immense power in 
the production of idealized types, corresponded to the 
capacity for abstract thought among its men of science. 
The West took less kindly both to idealized types and to 
abstract thought ; on the other hand it was more produc- 
tive in the realm of portraiture and in the close and detailed 
observation of nature. The country gentleman’s love of 
nature, so typical of the Roman noble, corresponds to 
the power to express nature in plastic art. Greek art, 
which had few triumphs of nature representation to record 
on its own soil, brought however a most valuable element 
_to the development of Western art. It was the technique 
of Greek artists that combined with the taste of Roman 
patrons to produce the development known as the Augustan 
style. In this type of art, devoid of the freedom and the 
idealism of the great art of Greece, plants were treated as 
they had never been before (p. 2 ff.). In such speci- 
mens as the Tomb of the Haterii in the Lateran Museum, 
or the famous well-head at Vienna, we have the work 
of a faithful student of nature (see Figs. 1-3). In the 
mural paintings in the Villa Livia we have a treatment of 
plants so close and natural that they would serve for a 
modern botanical textbook. 

Roman art had, however, but a meteoric career. After 
the first century it steadily deteriorated. The causes 
of this deterioration may be sought in many directions. 
The growing estrangement of East and West deprived 
Roman art of a source of inspiration. The social disturb- 
ances of the time, the rise of the new religion and the 
character of what survived of the old pagan philosophy 
were none of them favourable to the free development of 
an independent art. Most of all, the exclusively literary 
character of education in the late Empire told against all 
originality and independence of thought. The whole 
stress was on classical models, and imitation was elevated 


184 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


into the very standard of excellence. As Christianity 
gained way on paganism it too developed an art, but it was 
an art in which even the details were copied from an older 
source. Such was the atmosphere in which the Western 
herbal tradition arose. 

In the first instance the Latin or Western herbals were 
nothing but translations of Greek works. They were part 
of a regular system of translation of medical works which 
began with the rendering of Celsus in the first pre-Christian 
century, and extended to Cassiodorus in the sixth century 
of the Christian era. In the case of the herbals the earliest 
Latin production seems to have been a translation of such 
a work on herbs about the year 400. To this the name of 
Apuleius became attached. The herbal of Apuleius wes 
probably illustrated in the original, for though the Greek 
source has not been found, fragments of a very similar 
Greek work with illustrations comparable to those in the 
earliest known manuscript of the Latin Apuleius have been 
recovered. 

During the third and fourth centuries the diversity of 
tongues within the Empire had created a difficulty of 
comprehending medical terms. Provincials, however per- 
fectly they might understand Latin, retained their local 
names for such familiar objects as herbs. To meet their 
difficulty, lists or lexicons of plant synonyms were prepared 
and one of these was very early incorporated into the 
text of the Apuleius herbal. 


A manuscript of the Apuleius herbal, dating from the 


sixth or early seventh century, is one of the treasures of the 
library at Leyden [Figs. 79 and 80]. Like the Juliana Anicia 
manuscript, it is a landmark in the history both of botany 
and of manuscript illustration. There is good evidence 
that the illustrations of this Leyden manuscript are copied 
from a manuscript two centuries older. It contains, too, 
the dictionary of synonyms that continued to be slavishly 
repeated through scores of generations on to the end of 
the Middle Ages, when not only were the dialects of the 


si ‘ 
. 
« ‘ \ F 
ee 
é ce 
: Ay oie 
- 3 a al eee Zz 


Fic. 79.—(Above) ARISTO 
LOCHIA PALLIDA 


From the Leyden Apuleius, 
written about A.D. 600. Con- 
trast the stiffness and rigidity 
of this figure from an eariy 
Latin MS. with the freedom of 
the Gteek in Fig. 73. 


Fic. 80,—(Below) BLACK- 
BERRY 


From the Leyden Apuleius, 
wtitten about A.D. 600. 


f i 
= 
’ 3 
r 
; 
i 
1 r} 
oF 
¥ 
~ 
f> 
+ 
‘ 
‘ teen, Ving 
4 
’ 
ve 
~~ 
eg Se) 
“vrorat 
’ : 
i ‘7 
" 
‘2 = _ 
ch, 
Le * 
ho Ca, 
. i 
Vv" ah 
* 
2 
S e 
. it 
x 
oe 
~ 
i 


4 
> 


1S 


1 
a 


EARLY HERBALS 185 


lexicon forgotten but the very fact of their existence had 
passed out of recollection. The Leyden Apuleius is the 
very recognizable ancestor of a whole host of manuscript 
herbals. These were copied and re-copied throughout 
the ages, naturally deteriorating a little at each stage. 

Finally, the period of printing is reached. The first 
printed herbal is again our Apuleius ; some of its old figures 
pass into print [Fig. 63, cf. Fig. 64] and with them the same 
Synonyms of the dead and forgotten tongues. Man is 
an imitative animal, but we doubt if any better instance of 
his imitativeness could be found than this constant copying 
and re-copying, for over a thousand years, with enormous 
labour and technical skill, of a futile work with its unre- 
cognizable figures and its incomprehensible vocabulary. 

The herbarium of Apuleius represents perhaps the first 
attempt to turn a Greek work of this type into Latin. 
Soon, however, a considerable part of the work of Dios- 
corides himself became available. When the actual work 
of translation took place we cannot be quite sure, but it 
was probably during the course of the Gothic domination 
(493-555). We see in it the handiwork of Cassiodorus 
(490-585), the Chancellor of the Emperor Theodoric the 
Goth. Cassiodorus grew tired of political power at an 
early age, and spent the very long evening of his life— 
he retired at 50, and died at gs—at his birthplace, Squillace, 
a town in the extreme south, which looks into the Gulf 
between the toe and heel of Italy. At Squillace was a 
Benedictine house, and Cassiodorus took great interest in 
its literary welfare. It was an age which looked exclusively 
to the past, and Cassiodorus was a creature of his age. 
Fortunate it is for us that he was so, for but for his activity 
it is possible that no complete Latin literary work—save 
that of Virgil—would have reached our time. 

In his Institutiones divinarum et humanarum Iitterarum 
he tells his monks that : ‘ If you have not sufficient facility 
with Greek writing, then you can turn to the herbarium 
of Dioscorides, which describes and figures the herbs of 


186 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


the field with wonderful faithfulness.’ Copies of this 
Latin translation of Dioscorides exist. ‘They are richly 
illustrated and some of the figures can be traced to the 
Juliana Anicia and its congeners. In them we see passing 
on to the Middle Ages some of the old figures which 
Crateuas had prepared in the first century B.c. Others of 
the figures of the Latin Dioscorides were prepared in Italy 
at a later date, and in them we may see the deteriorated 
descendants of Augustan art. 

Besides the genuine translation of the work of Dioscorides 
there were, however, other herbals to which his name 
became attached. ‘These were put together in the earlier 
Middle Ages. One of them is the so-called De herbis 
feminis Dioscoridis. This pseudo-Dioscoridean work was 
compiled in Latin at some early date out of sources such 
as Apuleius and the Latin Dioscorides. Another document, 
which scholars have been accustomed to distinguish by 
spelling the name in the mediaeval fashion, ‘ Dyascorides,’ 
was put together at Salerno from numerous Latin sources 
which do not include the true Dioscorides. Manuscripts 
of these works are provided with figures, and they form 
the bases of later mediaeval herbals. 

The figures of these herbals are more interesting than 
the texts which they illustrate. The copying of the figures 
from hand to hand, century after century, gave rise to 
traditions or schools of plant illustration. Even in the 
Leyden Apuleius most of the pictures are already heavily 
stylized and far removed from nature drawing [Figs. 79 and 
80]. This model remained little altered till the tenth century, 
and herbals of that period from the Rhineland and Italy 
still preserve pictures very close to the original type. 
Then, however, there set in a new method of drawing 
which, taking old models, deeply modified them. The 
new type of plant-drawing appeared perhaps first in 
northern France, but soon spread over Europe. The 
plants depicted became more and more diagrammatic and 
the drawing heavier. The style reached its climax in the 


Pre. .8t. 


The Figure of ‘Earth’ from Botticelli’s Primavera, with anemones, roses, and 
centauries issuing from her mouth. Twigs of spruce fir can be seen in the back- 
ground, The picture was painted in 1478, and in feeling marks the passage from 
mediaeval to modern. 


186] 


EARLY HERBALS | 187 


thirteenth century, at which period heavily diagrammatized 
and geometrical figures were being produced, rigidly 
enclosed in frames of burnished gold. ‘The pictures are 
technically remarkable, but as plants they have become 
totally unrecognizable [Plates IX and X]. 

In the earlier Middle Ages an especial interest attaches 
itself to the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Magnificent docu- 
ments in themselves, they gain additional interest from 
being the first vernacular treatises of the kind in existence. 
The investigator approaches them with hopes that they 
may yield a harvest of Anglo-Saxon custom and folk-lore. 
Alas! the hope is destined to disappointment. With 
insignificant exceptions the only thing English about these 
works is their language. When they differ from their 
classical original it is usually due to an error of the translator 
or the scribe, to some misarrangement of the text, or to 
the introduction of some copied passage from another 
‘classical source. Even the figures can be shown to be 
taken from French or Italian documents [Figs. 59, 60, 63, 
64, and Plates III, IV, V]. 

Though the figures in the manuscript herbals up to 
the fifteenth century almost always correspond very closely 
to a fixed tradition, there are yet a very few exceptions to 
this rule. Most interesting of these is a Latin manuscript 
written at Bury St. Edmunds about 1120. The majority 
of its figures are traditional, but others are convincing 
naturalistic studies. Some monastic plant-lover had set 
himself the task of preparing a book of plant pictures. 
He had before him this ancient herbal, and proceeded 
to identify figures in it with the plants in his monastery 
garden. Thus, for the ‘Viperina’ of the old book, 
he adopted a milk thistle, Carduus marianus [Plate VI], 
then a garden plant from southern Europe, where it is 
common in waste places, and now a weed of escape in 
Britain. Similarly, for the ‘Camedrum’ of the ancient 
herbal he took Teucrium chamaedrys [Plate VII], another 
south European and western Asiatic form, which though 


188 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


now established in parts of England is unquestionably a 
garden escape. Again, for ‘ Paeonia’ he depicted a non- 
British Orobus [Plate VIII]. His naturalistic drawings 
are a reflex of a very characteristic Anglo-Saxon form of 
art. That school, though very seldom occupying itself 
with the plant-forms—which were usually merely copied 
—was very active in his day. Unfortunately the Anglo- 
Saxon style perished soon after and naturalism in Art had 
to await the Renaissance. 

As the mediaeval centuries wore on, new influences began 
to affect the medical world. The most important of 
these, so far as the herbals are concerned, is that which 
comes from the ‘ Arabian ’ writers. ‘This influence is indeed 
the key to mediaeval science (see pp. 71-81). Islam, nowa- 
days the client of Christendom, was from the ninth until 
the twelfth or thirteenth century the envied possessor of all 
the science and philosophy then accessible, and the West 
had to wrest it from her. The process led to a remarkable 
intellectual upheaval, the result of which is embedded 
in the great development known as ‘ Scholasticism’ (see 
pp. 85-90). 

The first exponent of this Arabian influence was Con- 
stantine the African, an adventurer who came from North 
Africa, where he seems to have been in contact with Jewish 
physicians. He settled at Salerno, and later became a 
monk at the ancient Benedictine monastery of Monte 
Cassino, where he spent many years translating works from 
Arabic. He died in 1087. About a century later, in 
1161, one Odo, of Meune on the Loire, composed a poem ~ 
about herbs, drawing on Constantine and on certain older 
Latin sources. This was the first independent herbal to 
be produced in the West in mediaeval times, and it became 
one of the most popular. Odo, or his successors, attached 
the name of ‘ Macer ’ to it, and it can be found in innumer- 
able manuscripts and printed editions, some of which are 
illustrated along traditional lines. 

Another herbal of about the same date as ‘ Macer’ was 


Fic. 82,—COLUMBINE 


By Leonardo da Vinci, Windsor Library. 


183] 


EARLY HERBALS 189 


put together by the physician Mathaeus Platearius, at 
Naples. It is known by its opening words Circa instans. 
This work relies partly on the old Latin sources, but like 
Macer draws also on Arabian material. Platearius knew 
of the old dictionary of synonyms, now quite incompre- 
hensible (p. 185), and substituted for it a series of Greek, 
Latin, and colloquial Italian plant names. This list is 
philologically interesting as an early specimen of the Italian 
language. ‘The Circa instans was translated into several 
vernaculars and had considerable influence. It is interest- 
ing, too, as the prototype in the mediaeval West of a new 
style of literature, the synonyma, or dictionary of drug 
synonyms. ‘l’hese works are occasionally illustrated and 
they also approach the herbal type. 

The study of plants now begins to take an upward turn. 
‘Macer ’ and the Circa instans are merely literary efforts and 
contain no real observation, but they herald the dawn. 
More scientific is the work On plants of the great 
Dominican, Albertus Magnus (1206-71280). Primarily a 
compilation based on a pseudo-Aristotelian work, it too is 
essentially a learned product. It contains, however, in 
places, evidence of careful first-hand observation. This 
botanical treatise gives a very pleasing impression of the 
common-sense and open-mindedness of the great mediaeval 
scholar who has thus a place among the grandfathers, if 
not among the fathers, of modern botany. 

In the century following Albert, Conrad von Megenberg 
(1309-98) produced in German his Book of Nature, a com- 
plete work on natural history and the first of its kind in 
the vernacular. He has a long section devoted to plants, 
which contains some original observations, though it is 
founded mainly on the work of Albert’s contemporary and 
intimate, Thomas of Cantimpré (1201-70), who in turn 
based his work on Latin versions of ancient biological works 
made from the Arabic. 

The scholastic movement, to the furthering of which 
Albert’s chief efforts were directed, was essentially inimical 


Igo FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


to first-hand study, and the great scholastic centuries from 
the twelfth to the fifteenth were infertile in botanical 
works exhibiting any first-hand knowledge. In one de- 
partment, however, there was some revival of the spirit of 
the naturalist. The artistic spirit early showed its kinship 
with the scientific by the closeness with which some illumi- 
nators of manuscripts sought to imitate nature. The 
texts of the herbals remained fixed, while the illustrations, 
even of the older texts, underwent a definite development 
in the direction of increased naturalism, though still retain- 
ing a traditional element. 

To explain the development of illustration of the later 
mediaeval herbals some reference must be made to the 
manner in which they were prepared. The text was 
usually written before the figures were inserted, and 
writing and illumination were the work of different hands. 
The illuminator had the advantage over the scribe in being 
without learning, for in certain stages of human develop- 
ment freedom from tradition is a positive advantage. ‘Thus 
the figures are as a rule a little later and may occasionally 
be much later than the text, and are not infrequently pro- 
duced in a different spirit. Sometimes the provenance of 
the model can be determined from an examination of the 
figures. Thus in one of the figures from the Anglo-Saxon 
herbarium of about the year 1os5o0, the plant representing 


the henbane, or to call it by its earlier English name, 


hennebelle, is not our familiar Hyoscyamus niger but Hyo- 
scyamus reticulatus, a Mediterranean form not found in this 
country [Plate V]. Again, the herbal prepared at Bury 
St. Edmunds in 1120, to which we have already referred, 
can be shown to reproduce a figure of a thistle that 
grows in southern France [Plate VI}. 


It must always be remembered too that those who used 


these herbals had no idea of plant distribution. The 
conception that flora had local peculiarities, familiar enough 
in antiquity, had been lost in the Middle Ages. When 


the scribe copied his text he usually left a space into which 


ge te 
5 : J ‘3 7 
ese 


Fics. 83 and 84.—SCABIOUS AND ACORNS 
By Jean de Bourdichon, 1508. 


190] 


EARLY HERBALS IQI 


the illustrator could then fit his figure. Many manuscript 
herbals are known in which the illustrator has either not 
completed or not begun his work, so that these spaces 
remain blank. The gaps might be filled in later, according 
as the owner of the book had the talent or the financial 
resources at his disposal. Sometimes the original model 
was not available when the later figures were inserted, so 
that these do not always fit the spaces left for them. 

Such figures of plants being copied from earlier figures, 
became further removed from nature at each stage. But 
the degradation of the copied herbarium had its limits, and 
those limits were reached when the figures had so utterly 
deteriorated that no semblance to an indigenous plant 
could be discerned by the native scribe or owner of the 
book. At this point it was necessary, if the herbal was to 
be of use in practice, that there should be a return to 
nature so as to give some impression of a local plant. The 
point of lowest illustrational degradation corresponds in 
general to the full development of the heavy stylized 
manner at the beginning of the thirteenth century 
[Plates IX and X]. From this period we can trace the 
rise towards modern methods of plant illustration. The 
movement was continuous and in manuscripts of the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we can distinguish 
beautiful attempts to imitate nature, comparable in their 
degree to the work of the artists who employed their 
talents on grander themes. 

Although some advance in herbal illustration began in 
the thirteenth century, we have again the history repeated 
of the capacity to represent plants lagging behind other 
forms of art. This delay is very noticeable in the art of 
the great painters. Thus the plants of Giotto (1267 ?-1337) 
can rarely be identified, and Orcagna (1308 ?-68) is hardly, 
if at all, more easy to interpret. Even Fra Angelico 
(1387-1455) still belongs in this respect to the Middle 
Ages. The first great plant painter is undoubtedly 
Botticelli himself (1444-1510). In the ‘ Birth of Venus’ 


192 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


and in the ‘ Primavera’ are dozens of plants accurately 
and faithfully rendered. Especially good from the botanic 
point of view is the beautiful cloud of flowers that falls 
from the mouth of ‘Earth’ in the latter great picture 
[Fig. 81]. 

With Leonardo (1452-1519) and Diirer (1471-1528) we 
encounter a new type. ‘The study of the minute details of 
plants—botanical structure—is the strong point of the 
former with his instinctive scientific bias, the rendering 
of plant habits one of the glories of the latter. The discus- 
sion of the works of such men as these would take us far 
beyond our subject, but they are important for our purpose 
because of the repercussion of the movements which they 
represent upon the schools of manuscript illumination and 
so upon the herbals [Fig. 82]. 

The faithful rendering of minute details of nature is the 
special field of the miniature painter. This power is 
beautifully brought out in many manuscripts of the later 
fifteenth century, and in none better illustrated than in 
the famous manuscript of Bartholomaeus Anglicus (c. 1350), 
in the Royal Collection at the British Museum. This 
grand volume was prepared at Bruges in 1482, and a large 
part of its text is itself of the nature of a herbal. There 
was a contemporary type of manuscript too which linked 
itself especially with plant illustration. This was the 
‘Book of Hours,’ on which the illuminators expended — 
much of their best art. One great book of hours—itself 
one of the finest specimens of manuscript illustration in 
existence—contains also a valuable example of herbal 
illustration. It is the document known as Les grandes 
heures de la Reine Anne de Bretagne, in the National Library 
at Paris. The illumination of this manuscript is the work 
of Jean de Bourdichon, and was wrought in the year 1508. 
It contains scores of plants portrayed in an interesting 
manner intermediate between mere design and free drawing. 
The plants are shown with the insects which infest them, 
and these also are most carefully and exactly represented. 


Fics. 85 and 86.—CAMPANULA (Garden variety) AND VIOLETS 
By Jean de Bourdichon, 1508. 


192] 


EARLY HERBALS 193 


The work of Jean de Bourdichon is unquestionably a monu- 
ment of accurate nature study [Figs. 83-6]. 

While these artistic developments were continuing the 
art of printing was being perfected. Much attention has 
been paid to the earliest printed herbals, and they are 


Fic. 87.—From the Buch der Natur of Conrad von Megenberg, printed at Augsburg 
in 1475. 


certainly of great interest as illustrating the evolution of 
the woodcut. From the point of view of botanical history, 
or even in the limited field of the evolution of the herbal, 
they are, however, of little significance. In the first printed 
herbal, the Latin Apuleius, which appeared at Rome in 
1484, there is nothing noteworthy about the illustrations 


13 


194 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


save their badness [Fig. 63]. It was printed from an inferior 
and well-known type of manuscript original closely allied to 
the Anglo-Saxon herbal of five hundred years earlier. 
Again, the ‘ Bartholomaeus Anglicus,’ printed first in 1470, 
and reprinted by Wynkyn de Worde in England in 1495, 
and Conrad von Megenberg’s Das Buch der Natur, pro- 
duced at Augsburg in 1475 [Fig. 87], are utterly inferior 


Fic, 88.—Wallflower with Dodder. Fic. 89.—Yellow Flag. 
From the Gart der Gesundheit, printed at Mayence, 1485. 


to the magnificent work of the Royal Bartholomaeus or 
Bourdichon’s ‘ Hours.’ 

Among these early printed books there is only one small 
group of early printed herbals, the so-called Gart der 
Gesundheit, in which there is evidence of a definite appeal 
to nature, and some of its figures set a standard for the 
next generation. The extension of the printer’s art to 
the service of scientific botany had thus its first home in 
Germany. It consisted in the attempt to portray faithfully 


~ 


EARLY HERBALS 195 


a series of plants with all the new power that printing had 
placed in the herbalists’ hands. The great step was only 
taken with the complete renunciation of the manuscript 
tradition [Figs. 88 and 89]. 


Fic. 90.—Anemone, from Brunfels, Strassburg, 1530. 


It is the distinction of Otto Brunfels (1464-1534) that 
he was.the first to produce a herbal which relied entirely 
on observation. His work, which he justly called Her- 
barum vivae eicones, was produced in parts that began to 
appear at Strassburg in 1530. ‘The blocks were executed 
by Hans Weiditz, who deserves to be remembered by 


196 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


historians of botany. His drawings are firm, sure, and 
faithful, and it is instructive to compare them to those of a 
good modern hand-book of plant form [Fig.go]. The text 


Lge, i 
iSO s fe 
NOTION \\ EX 
KG aun A oi \ 
Pea Vi Ane 
ri 7 ~ H tn 
VY "FrnS\ 
| AN 
IS 
N pee» 
ay Sgr : 
bag Was 
aN 


£ PAD ae 
Liv pi raae 
tht kyo 
LES Oy 


N 
Sys 


Up 


ELENIVM 
Mlane. 


Fic. 91.—Elecampane, from Fuchs, Basel, 1542. 


of Brunfels is inferior to the figures, for it is befogged by a 
curious fallacy from which the botanical world took long 
to free itself. He seeks always to identify his plants with 
those of Dioscorides. As Dioscorides described the flora 
of the eastern Mediterranean littoral, and Brunfels that of 


: EARLY HERBALS 197 


the Rhine, the attempt naturally gives rise to much con- 
fusion. 

The next important German botanist was Hieronymus 
Bock (1498-1554), whose work is significant as containing 
for the first time since Greek days adequate descriptions 
of the mode of occurrence and localities of the plants. 

The most remarkable of the early illustrated herbals, 
however, is that of Leonhard Fuchs (1501-66). Fuchs 
was well known as a practising 
physician and apart from his 
herbal he has a definite place in 
the history of medicine. His 
masterpiece, however, is his De 
historia stirpium, which appeared 
at Basel in 1542. This work 
is a fine achievement in every 
direction, and a landmark in the 
history of natural knowledge. 
Fuchs was an excellent scholar, 
with a good acquaintance with 
the Greek and Latin classics, 
and his identifications with the 
plants mentioned by other 
writers are based on adequate 
study. The woodcuts that 
illustrate the work are of ex- 4 
traordinary beauty and truth, P16 92——Cowslip, from Fuchs, 
and based on a first-hand study BERET oa 
of the habits and structure of plants. These figures 
established a tradition and standard of plant illustration 
which is clearly traceable down to the middle of the follow- 
ing century, and is perceptible to this day [Figs. gr and ga]. 

With Fuchs we reach the high-water mark of the Renais- 
sance herbal. The history of the herbal continued for 
long after his time, and important books were produced by 
later authors. From now on, however, such works were 
to develop on more strictly botanical lines. Fuchs was 


198 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


essentially a herbalist in the limited sense. His plants 
were arranged in alphabetical order and there is in his 
pages nothing of the nature of classification, hardly any- 
thing that can be called plant geography, little or nothing 
concerning the essential nature of plants, or of their relation 
to other living things. It is a herbal pure and simple, 
containing none of the scientific elements except systematic 
observation. But modern science was dawning. The 
year after the De historia stirpium appeared at Basel there 
was printed at the same town the De fabrica corporis humani 
of Andreas Vesalius, and in the same year the De revolu- 
tionibus orbium celestium of Nicholas Copernicus was 
published at Niirenberg. With these two fundamental 
works dealing with the microcosm and the macrocosm 
respectively modern science had dawned. The day of the 
herbal and all that it represented was over. 


PLATE XI 


tha pra AO i eerie 


We 


“a 


Ff 


i ll nasil Inne ap DIR: A OES 


VISION OF THE TRINITY 


From a MS. of Hildegard’s Scivias at Wiesbaden, written at Bingen about 1180. 


For description see page 232. 
[199 


VI 
THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 


1. Hildegard and her Works : ‘ p- 199 
2. Hildegard’s View of the Universe, the Siam ; Pp. 205 
3. Hildegard’s Theory of the Relation d, Macrocosm and 
Microcosm : Pp. 215 
4. Hildegard’s View of the Stricture ae Man, ashe Micsocein Pp. 223 
5. Birth and Death and the Nature of the Soul p. 226 
6. The Pathological Basis of the Visions Pp. 230 
7. Sources of Hildegard’s Scientific Knowledge Pp. 234 


tO ton ton C07. tOr Lor 


§ 1. Hildegard and her Works 


HiLpecarp of Bingen was born in 1098, of noble parentage, 
at Bockelheim, on the River Nahe, near Sponheim. Destined 
from an early age to a religious life, she passed nearly all 
her days within the walls of Benedictine houses. She was 
educated and commenced her career in the isolated convent 
of Disibodenberg, at the junction of the Nahe and the 
Glan, where she rose to be abbess. In 1147 she and some 
of her nuns migrated to a new convent on the Rupertsberg, 
a finely placed site, where the smoky railway junction of 
Bingerbriick now mars the landscape. Between the little 
settlement and the important mediaeval town of Bingen 
flowed the River Nahe. The stream was, and is, here spanned 
by a bridge of Roman origin, to which still clings the name 
of the pagan Drusus (15 B.c.-A.D. 19). At this spot [Fig. 
93], a place of ancient memories, secluded and yet linked 
to the world, our abbess passed the main portion of her 
life, and here she closed her eyes in the eighty-second year 
of her age on September 17, 1179. 

Hildegard was a woman of extraordinarily active and 
independent mind. She was not only gifted with a 


200 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


thoroughly efficient intellect, but was possessed of great 
energy and considerable literary power, and her writings 
cover a wide range, betraying the most varied activities 


oS i ee ee ar 
ee ee ee ee ee ee ae eee 


93.—The Hildegard country, 


Fic. 


| 
| 
L, 
| 


eh 


and remarkable imaginative faculty. ‘The most interesting 
of her works are her books of visions. She was before 
all things an ecstatic, and both of her great mystical works, 
the Scivias (written between 1141 and 1150), and the 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 20I 


Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis (written between 
1163 and 1170), contain passages of real power and beauty. 
Less valuable is her third long mystical work (the second in 
point of time), the Liber vitae meritorum (written between 
1158 and 1162). She wrote an interesting mystery-play 
and is perhaps responsible for a collection of musical com- 
positions, while her life of St. Disibode, the Irish missionary 
(594-674) to whom her part of the Rhineland owes its 
Christianity, and her account of St. Rupert, a local saint 
commemorated in the name ‘ Rupertsberg,’ bear witness to 
her narrative powers, to her capacity for systematic arrange- 
ment, and to her historical interests. Her extensive corre- 
spondence demonstrates the influence that she wielded, 
while certain other works by her give us glimpses of her 
activities as head of a religious house. 

Her biographer, the monk Theodoric, records that she 
also busied herself with the treatment of the sick and credits 
her with miraculous powers of healing. Some of the 
cited instances of this faculty, as the curing of a love-sick 
maid, are but manifestations of personal ascendancy over 
weaker minds. Notwithstanding her undoubted acquain- 
tance with such feeble remains of ancient science as existed 
in her day, and notwithstanding the claims that have been 
made for her as a pioneer of the hospital system, there 
is no serious evidence that her treatment extended beyond 
exorcism and prayer. There is a medical compilation 
ascribed to her, which is an interesting relic of Dark Age 
medicine. We are, however, unconvinced by the evidence 
that Hildegard was its authoress. 

For her time and circumstance Hildegard saw a fair 
amount of the world. Living on the Rhine, the highway of 
Western Germany, she was well placed for observing the 
traffics and activities of men. She had journeyed as far 
north as Cologne, and had traversed the eastern tributary 
of the great river to Frankfort on the Main and to Rothen- 
burg on the Taube. Her own country, the basin of the 
Nahe and the Glan, she knew intimately. She was in 


202 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


constant communication with Mayence, the seat of the 
archbishopric in which Bingen was situated, and there 
has survived an extensive correspondence with the ecclesias- 
tics of Cologne, Speyer, Hildesheim, Treves, Bamberg, 
Prague, Niirenberg, Utrecht, and numerous other towns 
of Germany, the Low Countries, and Central Europe. 

Hildegard’s journeys, undertaken with the object of 
stimulating spiritual revival, were of the nature of religious 
progresses. Like those of her contemporary, St. Bernard of 
Clairvaux, they were in fact largely directed against the 
heretical and most cruelly persecuted Cathari, an Albigen- 
sian sect widely spread in the Rhine country of the twelfth 
century. In justice to her memory it is to be recalled that 
she herself was ever against the shedding of blood. It was 
not an age of tolerance, but had her less ferocious views 
prevailed, some more substantial relic than the groans and 
tears of this people might have reached our time, while the 
annals of the Church would have been spared the defilement 
of an indelible stain. 

Hildegard’s correspondence with St. Bernard, then 
preaching his crusade, with four popes, Eugenius IJ, 
Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and Alexander III, and with the 
emperors Conrad and Frederic Barbarossa, brings her into 
the current of general European history. She comes into 
some slight contact with the story of England by her horta- 
tory letters to Henry II and his consort Eleanor, the divorced 
wife of Louis VII. , 

To complete a sketch of her literary activities, mention 
should be made of a secret script and language attributed 
to her. It is a foolishly empty device that hardly merits 
the dignity of the term ‘ mystical.’ It has, however, 
exercised the ingenuity of several learned philologists. 

There is ample material for a full biography of Hildegard, 
and many accounts have appeared of her. Most of them 
are the work of men devoid of critical judgement and are 
marked'by a‘desire for edification that neither adds to their 
attractiveness as literature nor conduces to our assurance 


Fic. 94.—THE STRUCTURE OF THE SPHERE OF THE EARTH: 


From a MS. at Lucca of Hildegard’s Liber Divinorum Operum 
For description see page 222. 


Simplicis Hominis, written about 1200, 


202] 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 203 


of their truthfulness. It would demand more skill than 
her biographers have exhibited to interest a detached reader 
in the minutiae of monastic disputes that absorbed a con- 
siderable part of her activities. Perhaps the best life of 
her is the earliest. It is certainly neither the most credulous 
nor the worst written and is by her contemporaries, the 
monks Godefrid and Theodoric. 

Hildegard was never canonized. Attempts towards that 
end were made under the Popes Gregory IX (1237), Inno- 
cent IV (1243), and John XXII (1317). Miraculous cures 
and other works of wonder were claimed for her, but either 
they were insufficiently miraculous or insufficiently attested. 
Those who have impartially traced her life in her docu- 
ments will, we believe, agree with the verdict of the Church. 
Hers was a fiery, a prophetic, in many ways a singularly 
noble spirit, but she exhibited defects of character which 
prevent us from regarding her as a woman of truly saintly 
mind or life. From her doctrine of Nous (p. 217) the 
orthodox may derive evidence of her heresy as an author 
and the pious draw comfort for her failure to achieve 
canonization as a saint. 

In attempting to interpret the views of Hildegard on 
scientific subjects, certain special difficulties present them- 
selves. First is the confusion arising from the writings 
to which her name has been erroneously attached. From 
the discussion which follows we omit certain works ascribed 
to her on what seem to us inadequate grounds. A second 
difficulty is due to the receptivity of her mind, so that views 
and theories that she accepts in her earlier works become 
modified, altered, and developed in her later writings. A 
third difficulty, perhaps less real than the others, is the 
visionary and involved form in which her thoughts are 
cast. But a fourth and more vital difficulty is the attitude 
that she adopts towards phenomena in general. To this 
difficulty we must devote a little special attention. 

To Hildegard’s mind there is no distinction between 
physical events, moral truths, and spiritual experiences. 


204 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


This view, which our children share with their mediaeval 
ancestors, was developed but not transformed by her 
visionary powers. Her fusion of internal and external 
universe links Hildegard to a whole series of mediaeval 
visionaries, culminating with Dante. In Hildegard, as in 
her fellow-mystics, we find that ideas on Nature and Man, 
the Moral World and the Material Universe, the Spheres, 
the Winds and the Humours, Birth and Death, on the 
Soul, the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Nature of God, 
are not only interdependent but closely interwoven. Nowa- 
days we separate our ideas into categories, scientific, ethical, 
theological, philosophical, and so forth, and we even esteem 
it a virtue to retain and restrain our thoughts within limits 
that we deliberately set for them. To Hildegard the segre- 
gation of ideas in this manner would have been incompre- 
hensible. Such terms as parallelism or allegory do not 
cover her views of the relation of the material and spiritual. 
In her mind the material and spiritual are really interfused, 
or rather they have not yet been separated. 

Therefore, although in the following pages an attempt 
is made to estimate her scientific views, yet this method must, | 
of its nature, interpret her thought only in a very partial 
fashion. Hildegard presents to us scientific thought as an 
undifferentiated factor, and an attempt is here made to 
separate it, by the artificial but not unscientific process of 
dissection, from the organic matrix in which it is embedded. 

The interest of the works of Hildegard is greatly heigh- 
tened by the existence of certain early and most remarkably 
illuminated manuscripts of her visions. Some knowledge 
of the miniatures in two of these, one at Wiesbaden and one 
at Lucca, is essential for the understanding of her meaning. 

The illuminated manuscript of Hildegard’s Scivias in 
the provincial library at Wiesbaden is a truly noble | 
volume, in excellent preservation and of the highest value 
for the history of mediaeval art. It was prepared in or . 
near Bingen at about the time of Hildegard’s death. Its 
miniatures help greatly in the interpretation of the visions, 


PLATE XII 


VISION OF THE ‘SEDENS LUCIDUS’ 


Froma MS. of Hildegard’s Scivias at Wiesbaden, 
wtitten at Bingen about 1180. The figure is 
typical of migraine. It consists of a glittering 
background, here represented in gold, on which 
appears a vety bright shimmering point of red 
light. From this point fortification figures 
radiate. The vision is identical in pathological 
basis with that depicted in Plate XIII and both 
ate combined in the ‘ reconstructed’ vision of 
Plate XIV. The Frontispiece, Plate XI, and 
Fig. 108 are migrainous appearances of rather 
different types. See page 233. 


204] 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 205 


illustrating them often in the minutest details. In view of 
_ the great difficulty in visualizing much of her narrative, there 
can be little doubt that the preparation of these miniatures 
was either supervised by the prophetess herself or under 
her immediate tradition [Frontispiece, Plates XI-XIV, Figs. 
95, 97-9, 107%]. 

The other important illuminated manuscript of Hildegard 
is that of the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis in 
the municipal library at Lucca. It was written very 
early in the thirteenth century. Of its most remarkable 
miniatures, some are of special value for the interpretation 
of Hildegard’s theories on the relation of Macrocosm and 
Microcosm, of which more hereafter. They represent 
the meaning of the text with a convincing sureness of touch. 
Without the clues provided by the Lucca miniatures, many 
passages in the book would be wholly incomprehensible. 
It is probable that the traditional interpretation of Hilde- 
gard’s works, thus preserved to our time by these miniatures 
and by them alone, had its origin from the mouth of the 
prophetess herself [Plate II, Figs. 94 and 101-3]. 

We have here to consider especially Hildegard’s view of 
the material world, the scientific contents of her visions. 
These are all grouped round her theory of the macrocosm 
and microcosm. It will be convenient to consider her 
views under four heads. Firstly, her conception of the 
structure of the Universe, the Macrocosm (§ 2). Secondly, © 
the doctrine of the relation of Macrocosm and Microcosm 
(§ 3). Thirdly, her view of the structure of the body of 
Man, the Microcosm (§ 4). Fourthly, her view of the 
nature of the soul (§ 5). 


§ 2. Hildegard’s View of the Universe the Macrocosm 


To the student of mediaeval science Hildegard’s beliefs 
as to the nature and structure of the universe are among the 
most interesting that she has to impart, and here the minia- 
tures aid us greatly. 

In the middle of Hildegard’s universe is a spherical earth. 


206 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Around this are arranged a number of concentric shells 


or zones. ‘The inner zones, like the earth itself, tend to * © 


be spherical. The outer zones are, however, oval, and the 
BAST ff pe 
lire ae 
RR 
WA 
yp AniceRy) 


; S a INNER PLANETS 
\ AV 3 BN ADS ertus nd Menwy 


K 
k ie GSR 
WOU 


LZ, 


Bucs 


on 
|__| ARE FIXED STARS 


NORTH 
Ki 


if 
aa de? R 


=a (ail bg wa 
A 


ge MO / ee 


y) 


' 


& 


poh at ta Prac x V kee Ber 
SE L4G 
THE rem F NS 
WORLD eG iY Wy 
CD 


Fic. 95.—Hildegard’s first scheme of the universe, slightly simplified from a figure 
in the Wiesbaden Codex. 

outermost of all is egg-shaped, with one end prolonged and 

more pointed than the other [Fig. 95]. 

The concentric structure of the universe with the earth 
in the middle is a commonplace of mediaeval science. In 
most mediaeval works, as for instance in Dante (p. 86), 
the universe is, however, described as spherical. The egg- 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 207 


shape, as exhibited by Hildegard, is unusual, but is en- 
countered among other mediaeval writers. Many of the 
so-called Mappaemundi exhibit the surface of the habitable 
earth itself as oval, and it was probably from the misunder- 
standing of such charts that Hildegard and other writers 
gained their conception of an oval universe. In her method 
of orientation also she follows the Mappaemundi, placing 
the east at the top of the page, where we are accustomed to 
place the north. 

It is unfortunate that Hildegard does not deal with 
geography in the restricted sense, and so we are not in full 
possession of her views on the antipodes, a subject of deri- 
sion to patristic and of misconception to scholastic writers. 
She does, however, vaguely refer to the inversion of seasons 
and climates in the opposite hemisphere, though she 
confuses the issue by the adoption of a theory, widespread 
in the Middle Ages and reproduced in the Divina Commedia, 
that the antipodean surface of the earth is uninhabitable, 
since it is either beneath the ocean or in the mouth of the 
Dragon [Fig. 94]. The nature of the antipodean inversion 
of climates was clearly grasped by her contemporary, 
Herrade de Landsberg [Fig. 96]. 

Hildegard’s views as to the internal structure of the terres- 
trial sphere are more difficult to follow. Her doctrine of 
Purgatory and Hell is confused, but she held that the interior 
of the earth contained two vast spaces, shaped like truncated 
cones, where punishment was meted out and whence many 
evil things had issue. Her whole scheme presents analogies 
as well as contrasts to that of her kindred spirit Dante [Fig. 
95 and cf. Fig. 39]. Hildegard, however, who died before 
the thirteenth century had dawned, presents us with a 
scheme far less definite and elaborated than that of her 
great successor, who had all the stores of the golden age of 
scholasticism on which to draw. 

In Hildegard’s first diagram of the universe, which is of 
the nature of a ‘ section,’ the world, the sphaera elementorum 
of mediaeval writers, is diagrammatically represented as 


208 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE fe 


compounded of earth, air, fire, and water contact 
in what her younger contemporary, Alexander of Ne 
(1157-1217), calls ‘a certain concordant discord of 
elements.’ In the illustrations, the four elements | 
each a conventional method of representation, which 
pears again and again in the different miniatures [Figs. 98 
Around this world with its four elements is spread the — 
atmosphere, the aer lucidus or alba pellis, diagrammatiiag 


ae ae 


Through this alba pels no creature of eatth can bale 
Beyond are ranged in order four further shells or 


cardinal wind is accompanied by two socio 
represented, in the traditional fashion, by the es 
supernatural pont 2h 


Fic. 97.—THE LAST JUDGEMENT AND THE FATE OF THE ELEMENTS 


For 


bout 1180 


ingen a 


itten at B 
ge 210, 


[= 


PAVE 


ZaS 


1V 


Susi 
ion see pa 


baden of Hildegard’ 


1es 


at Wi 


From a MS 


ipt 


descr 


208] 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 209 


of the aer aquosus float the clouds, and according as they 
contract or expand or are blown aside the heavenly bodies 
above are revealed or concealed. 

Enwrapping the aer aquosus is the purus aether, the 
widest of all the zones. The long axis of this, as of the 
remaining outer shells, is in the direction from east to west, 
thus determining the path of movement of the heavenly 
bodies. Scattered through the purus aether are the constel- 
lations of the fixed stars and arranged along the long axis 
are the moon and the two inner planets. From this zone 
blows the west wind. The position and constitution of this 
purus aether is evidently the result of some misinterpretation 
of Aristotelian writings. 

The next zone, the umbrosa pellis or ignis niger, is a 
narrow dark shell, whence proceed the more dramatic 
meteorological events. Here, following on the hints of the 
Wisdom of Solomon (chap. v) and the Book of Fob (chap. 
XXXVili), are situated the diagrammatically portrayed 
treasuries of lightning and of hail. From here the tempes- 
tuous north wind bursts forth. The presence of this ignis 
miger suggests some contact on the part of the authoress 
with the teaching of the Meteorologica of Aristotle. The 
nature of this contact we shall consider later. 

The outermost layer of all is a mass of flames, the lucidus 
ignts. Here are the sun and the three outer planets, and 
from here the south wind pours its scorching breath [Fig. 95]. 

The movements of the four outer zones around each other, 
carrying the heavenly bodies with them, are attributed to 
the winds in each zone. The seasonal variations in the 
movements of the heavenly bodies, along with the recurring 
seasons themselves, are also determined by the prevalent 
winds, which, acting as the motive-power upon the various 
zones, form a celestial parallelogram of forces. In this way is 
explained also why in spring the days lengthen and in autumn 
they shorten, until in either case an equinox is reached. 


“I looked and behold the east and the south wind with their col- 
laterals, moving the firmament by the power of their breath, caused 


14 


210 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


it to revolve over the earth from east to west ; and in the same way the 


west and north wind and their collaterals, receiving the impulse and 


projecting their blast, thrust it back again from west to east... .’ 

‘T saw also that as the days began to lengthen, the south wind and 
his collaterals gradually raised the firmament in the southern zone up- 
wards towards the north, until the days ceased to grow longer. Then, 
when the days began to shorten, the north wind with his collaterals, 
shrinking from the brightness of the sun, drove the firmament back 
gradually southward until by reason of the lengthening days the south 
wind began yet again to raise it up.’ [Fig. 95.] 

Intimately bound up not only with her theory of the 
nature and structure of the universe but also with her 
beliefs as to the end of things is Hildegard’s doctrine of the 
elements. Before the Fall of Man these were arranged 
in a harmony, which was disturbed by that catastrophe 
[Fig. 98], so that they have since remained in the state of 
mingled confusion in which we always encounter them on 
the terrestrial globe. This mistio, to use the mediaeval 
Aristotelian term, is symbolized by the irregular manner in 
which the elements are represented in the central sphere of 
the diagram of the universe [Fig. 95]. Thus mingled 
they will remain until subjected to the melting-pot of the 
Last Judgement [Fig. 97], when they will emerge in a new 
and eternal harmony, no longer mixed as matter, but 
separate and pure, parts of the new heaven and the new 
earth [Fig. gg]. 


‘But the heavens and the earth which are now. . . are kept in 
store and reserved unto fire against the day of judgement and perdition 
of ungodly men. . . . But the day of the Lord will come .. . in 
the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the ele- 
ments shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that 
are therein shall be burned up. . . . Nevertheless we, according to 
his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness.’ (2 Peter iii, 7, 10, and 12.) 


So Hildegard, acting on a scriptural hint, is enabled to 
dematerialize her doctrine of the after-things. 
But, although since man’s fall the elements have lost their 


1 Migne, cols. 789-91. 


te 
‘ 
1 
7 


Ge 98.-MAN’S FALL AND THE Fic. 99—THE NEW HEAVENS AND 


DISTURBANCE OF THE PRIMORDIAL THE NEW EARTH AND THE NEW 
ELEMENTAL HARMONY. ORDERING OF THE ELEMENTS. 
For description see page 2to. For description see page 210, 


From a MS. at Wiesbaden of Hildegard’s Scivias, written at Bingen about 1180. 


210] 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 211 


order, and their harmony on this terrestrial orb, yet is that 
harmony still in part preserved in the celestial spheres that 
encircle and surround our globe ; and water, air, earth, and 
fire have each their respective representatives in the four 
concentric zones, the aer aquosus, the purus aether, the 
umbrosa pellis, and the lucidus ignis [Fig. 95]. These are 
the “ superior elements ’ which still retain some at least of 
their individuality and primal purity. From each of their 
spheres blows, as we have seen, one of the cardinal winds, 
and each wind partakes of the elemental character of the 
zone whence it issues, and has a corresponding influence 
on man’s body, since each of the four humours is specifi- 
cally affected by the element to which it corresponds. 


“Then I saw that by the diverse quality of the winds, and of the 
atmosphere as they in turn sweep through it, the humours in man are 
agitated and altered. For in each of the superior elements there is a 
breath of corresponding quality by which, through the power of the 
winds, the corresponding element (below) is forced to revolve in the 
atmosphere, and in no other way is it moved. And by one of those 
winds, with the agency of sun, moon and stars, the atmosphere which 
tempers the world is breathed forth.’! [Cf. Fig. 101.] 


This doctrine of the relation of the various winds to the 
four elements and through them to the four humours is 
found in the De Rerum Natura of Isidore of Seville, and is 
illustrated in European manuscripts from the ninth century 
onward, but we meet it set forth with special definiteness 
in the twelfth century in the translations from Messahalah 
(p. 236). It is encountered also in the work of Herrade de 
Landsberg (p. 237). In and after the thirteenth century it 
had become a common-place. 

The description we have given of the universe was set 
forth by Hildegard in her first mystical work, the Scivias 
(1141-50). Subsequently she became dissatisfied with the 
account she had given and, while not withdrawing it, she 
sought in her later Liber Divinorum Operum (1163-70) so 
to modify the original presentment as to bring it more 

1 Migne, col. 791. 


212 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


into line with accepted views which treated the universe as 
a series of concentric spheres. ‘Thus she writes : 


‘There appeared to me in vision a disk very like that object which 
I saw twenty-eight years ago of the form of an egg, in the third vision 
of my book Scivias. In the outer part of the disk there was as it were 
the lucidus ignis, and beneath it the circle of the ignis mger was por- 
trayed . . . and these two circles were so joined as to be one circle.’ 


There was thus one outer zone representing the fire. 


‘Under the circle of the ignis niger there was another circle in the 
likeness of the purus aether which was of the same width as the two 
conjoined (outer) fiery circles. And below this circle again was the 
circle of the aer aquosus as wide as the lucidus ignis. And below this 
circle was yet another circle, the fortis et albus lucidusque aer . . . the 
width whereof was as the width of the ignis niger, and these circles were 
joined to make one circle which was thus again of width equal to the 
outer two. Again, under this last circle yet another circle, the aer 
tenuis, was distinguishable, which could be seen to raise itself as a cloud, 
sometimes high and light, sometimes depressed and dark, and to diffuse 
itself as it were throughout the whole disk. . . . The outermost fiery 
circle perfuses the other circles with its fire, while the watery circle 
saturates them with its moisture (cf. Wisdom of Solomon xix. 18-20). 
And from the extreme eastern part of the disk to the extreme west a 
line is stretched out (i.e. the equator) which separates the northern 
zones from the others.’! [Fig. 100, Plate II, and Figs. 101, 103.] 


The earth lies concentrically with the aer tenuis and its 
measurements are given thus : 

‘In the midst of the aer tenuis a globe was indicated, the circum- 
ference of which was everywhere equidistant from the fortis et albus 
lucidusque aer, and it was as far across as the depth of the space from 
the top of the highest circle to the extremity of the clouds, or from 
the extremity of the clouds to the circumference of the inner globe.”? 
[Fig. 100.] 


In her earlier work, the Scivias, Hildegard apparently had 
not realized the need of accounting for the independent 
movements of the planets other than the sun and moon. 
She had thus placed the moon and two of the moving stars 
in the purus aether, and the sun and the three remaining 


1 Migne, cols. 403-14. * Migne, col. 751. 


1 FO ag eae 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 213 


moving stars in the Jucidus ignis. Since these spheres were 
moved by the winds, their contained planets would be 
subject to the same influences. In the Liber Divinorum 
Operum, however, she has come to realize how independent 
the movements of the planets really are, and she invokes 
a special cause for their vagaries. 


EAST 


7 WEST 
Fic. 100.—Hildegard’s later scheme of the universe reconstructed from her measure- 
ments. AB, CD, and EF are all equal and GH, HK, and KL are all equal. The clouds 
ate situated in the outer part of the Aer tenuis and are formed by an extension of 
the Aer aquosus towards the earth. 


“T looked and behold in the outer fire (lucidus ignis) there appeared 
a circle which girt about the whole firmament from the east westward, 
From it a blast produced a movement from west to east in the opposite 
direction to the movement of the firmament. But this blast did not 
give forth his breath earthward as did the other winds, but instead 
thereof it governed the course of the planets.’ [Cf. Fig. ror.] 


' Migne, col. 791. 


214 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


The source of the blast is represented in the Lucca 
manuscript as the head. of a supernatural being with a 
human face [Fig. ror]. 

These curious passages were written at some date after 
1163, when Hildegard was at least 65 years old. They 
reveal our prophetess attempting to revise much of her 
earlier theory of the universe. Note that (a) the universe has 
become round ; (8) there is an attempt to arrange the zones 
according to their density, i.e. from without inwards, fire, — 
air (ether), water, earth ; (c) exact measurements are given ; 
(2d) the water zone is continued earthward so as to mingle 
with the central circle. In all these and other respects she 
has adapted her opinions to the general current of mediaeval 
science which was just beginning to be moulded by Aristo- 
telian works translated from the Arabic. Her knowledge 
of the movements of the heavenly bodies is entirely innocent 
of the doctrine of epicycles, but in other respects her views 
have come to resemble those, for instance, of Messahalah, 
one of the simplest and easiest writers on the sphere. 
Furthermore, her conceptions have developed so as to fit in 
with the macrocosm-microcosm scheme which she grasped 
about the year 1158. Even in her latest work, however, 
her theory of the universe exhibits differences from the 
typical scholastic view, as exemplified for instance by Dante 
[Fig. 39 and compare Fig. roo]. | 

Like many mediaeval writers, Hildegard would have 
liked to imagine an ideal state of the elemental spheres in 
which the rarest, fire, was uppermost, and the densest, earth, 
undermost. Her conceptions were however disturbed by the 
awkward facts that water penetrated below the earth, and 
indeed sought the lowest level, while air and not water lay 
immediately above the earth’s surface. Mediaeval writers 
adopted various devices and expended a vast amount of in- 
genuity in dealing with this obvious discrepancy. Hildegard 
devotes much space and some highly involved allegory, both _ 
in the Scivias and in the Liber Divinorum Operum, to the __ 
explanation of the difficulty, while Dante himself wrote a 


Fic. 101.—THE MACROCOSM, THE MICROCOSM, AND THE WINDS 


From a MS. at Lucca of Hildegard’s Liber Divinorum Operum Simplicis Hominis, written about 1200. For 
description see pages 213-4. 
214] 


¥ 


igo 


PY c 
ir 
Sms, 

ee 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 215 


_ treatise in high scholastic style on this very subject. These 
works of two mystics illustrate the essential difference 
between mediaeval and modern science. Both writers 
attach a far greater demonstrative value to analogy than we 
now allow, and the reasoning of both is almost exclusively 
apriorit. ‘The vast stress on analogy and the constant use of 
a priort methods are the two chief elements which separate 
the scientific thought of the Middle Ages from that of our 
own time. 


§ 3. Hildegard’s Theory of the Relation of Macrocosm 
and Microcosm 


The winds and elements of the outer universe, the 
Macrocosm, become in Hildegard’s later schemes intimately 
related to structures and events within the body of man 
himself, the Microcosm, the being around whom the universe 
centres. ‘The terms macrocosm and microcosm are not em- 
ployed by her, but, in her last great work, the Lzber Divino- 
rum Operum, she succeeds, in most eloquent and able fashion, 
in synthesizing into one great whole, centred around this 
doctrine, her theological beliefs and her physiological 
knowledge, together with her conceptions of the working of 
the human mind and of the structure of the universe. ‘The 
work is thus an epitome of the science of the time viewed, 
however, through the distorting medium of this theory. 
In studying it the modern reader is necessarily hampered 
by the bizarre and visionary form into which the whole 
subject is cast. Nevertheless, the scheme, though complex 
and difficult, is neither incoherent nor insane, as at first 
sight it may seem. It is, in fact, a highly systematic and 
skilful presentment of a cosmic theory which for centuries 
dominated scientific thought. 

As an explanation of the complexity of existence which 
thinkers of all ages have sought to bring within the range of 
some simple formula, this theory of the essential similarity 
of macrocosm and microcosm held in the Middle Ages, 
during the Renaissance and even into quite modern times, 


216 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


a position comparable to that of the theory of evolution 
in our own age. If at times it passed into folly, fantasy, 
and even madness, it should be remembered that it also 
fulfilled a high purpose. It gavea significance to the facts of 
nature and a formula to the naturalist, it unified philosophic 
systems, it exercised the ingenuity of theologians, and fur- 
nished a convenient framework to prophecy, while it seemed 
to illumine history and to provide a key and meaning to 
life itself. Even now it is not perhaps wholly devoid of 
message, but as a phenomenon in the history of human 
thought, a theory which appealed to such diverse scientific 
writers as Seneca, Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, William 
Gilbert, William Harvey, Robert Boyle, and Leibnitz is 
surely worthy of attention. We may turn now to Hilde- 
gard’s presentation of this doctrine. 

Hildegard’s Liber Divinorum Operum opens with a remark- 
able and beautiful vision illustrated by a no less remarkable 
picture [Fig. 102] : 

“I saw a fair human form and the countenance thereof was of such 
beauty and brightness that it had been easier to gaze upon the sun. 
The head thereof was girt with a golden circlet through which appeared 
another face as of an aged man. From the neck of the figure on either 
side sprang a pinion which swept upward above the circlet and joined 
its fellow on high. And where on the right the wing turned upward, 
was portrayed an eagle’s head with eyes of flame, wherein appeared, as in 
a mirror, the lightning of the angels, while from a man’s head in the 
other wing the lightning of the stars did radiate. From either shoulder 
another wing reached to the knees. The figure was robed in brightness 
of the sun, while the hands held a lamb shining with light. Beneath, 
the feet trampled a horrible black monster of revolting shape, upon the 
right ear of which a writhing serpent fixed itself.’ } 


The image declares its identity in words reminiscent 
of the Wisdom literature or of passages in the Hermetic 
writings, but which are, in fact, partly borrowed from 
Bernard Sylvester (see pp. 230 and 237). 

“I am that supreme and fiery force that sends forth all the sparks 
of life. Death hath no part in me, yet do I allot it, wherefore I am girt 

1 Migne, col. 741. 


Mee i62- NOUS PERVADED BY THE GODHEAD AND CON- 
TROLLING HYLE 


From a MS. at Lucca of Hildegard’s Liber Divinorum Operum Simplicis Hominis, 
written about 1200. For description see pages 216-7. 


216] 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 217 


about with wisdom as with wings. I am that living and fiery essence of 
the divine substance that glows in the beauty of the fields. I shine 
in the water, I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars. Mine is 
that mysterious force of the invisible wind. I sustain the breath of 
all living. I breathe in the verdure and in the flowers, and when the 
waters flow like living things, it is I. I formed those columns that 
Support the whole earth . . . I am the force that lies hid in the winds, 
from me they take their source, and as a man may move because he 
breathes, so doth a fire burn but by my blast. All these live because 
I am in them and am of their life. I am wisdom. Mine is the blast of 
the thundered word by which all things were made. I permeate all 
things that they may not die. I am life,’ 


Hildegard thus supposes that the whole universe is 
permeated by a single living spirit, the figure of the vision. 
This spirit of the macrocosm [Fig. 102], the Nous or ‘ world 
spirit’ of Hermetic and Neoplatonic literature, the imper- 
sonated Nature, as we may perhaps render it, is in its turn 
controlled by the Godhead that pervades the form and is 
represented rising from its vertex as a second human face. 
Nature, the spirit of the cosmic order, controls and holds 
in subjection the hideous monster, the principle of death 
and dissolution, the Hyle or primordial matter of the Neo- 
platonists whose chaotic and anarchic force would shatter 
and destroy this fair world unless fettered by a higher power. 

With the details of the visionary figure we need not delay,? 
but we pass to the description of the structure of the macto- 
cosm itself, to which the second vision is devoted [Fig. 103]. 
Here appears the same figure of the macrocosmic spirit. 
But now the head and feet only are visible, and the arms 
are outstretched to enclose the disk of the universe which 
conceals the body. Although the macrocosm now de- 
scribed is considerably altered from Hildegard’s original 
scheme of the universe, she yet declares that ‘ I saw in the 
bosom of the form the appearance of a disk of like sort 

1 Migne, col. 743. 

* It is outside our purpose to attempt a full elucidation of Hildegard’s 
allegory. The eagle in the right wing signifies the power of Divine Grace, 


while the human head in the left wing indicates the powers of the natural 
man. To the bosom of the figure is clasped the Lamb of God. 


218 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


to that which twenty-eight years before I had seen in the 
vision, set forth in my book Scivias.’1 The zones of this 
disk are then described [Fig. 100]. They are from 
without inwards : 

(a) The lucidus ignis, containing the three outer planets, 
the sixteen principal fixed stars, and the south wind. 

(b) The ignis niger, containing the sun, the north wind, 
and the materials of thunder, lightning, and hail. 

(c) The purus aether, containing the west wind, the moon, 
the two inner planets, and certain fixed stars. 

(d) The aer aquosus, containing the east wind. 

(e) The fortis et albus lucidusque aer, where certain other 
fixed stars are placed. 

(f) The aer tenuis, or atmosphere, in the outer part of 
which is the zone of the clouds. All these zones are repre- 
sented in the accompanying plates and diagram. 

From all these objects, from the spheres of the elements, 
from the sun, moon, and other planets, from the four winds 
each with their two collaterals, from the fixed stars, and from 
the clouds, descend influences, indicated by lines, towards 
the figure of the microcosm [Figs. 101 and 103 and Plate IJ]. 

The microcosm is then introduced. 

‘ And again I heard the voice from heaven saying, ‘‘ God who created 
all things, wrought also man in His own image and similitude, and in 
him He traced [signavit] all created things, and He held him in such 
love that He destined him for the place from which the fallen angel had 
been cast.” ’? 

The various characters of the winds are expounded in a 
set of curious passages in which the doctrine of the Macro- 
cosm and Microcosm is further mystically elaborated. An 
endeavour is made to attribute to the winds derived from the 
different quarters of heaven qualities associated with a 
number of animals? The conception is illustrated and 
made comprehensible by the miniatures in the Lucca 
manuscript [Plate II and Figs. 101 and 103]. 

1 Migne, col. 751. 2 Migne, col. 744. 
3 Liber Divinorum Operum, part i, visions 2 and 3. 


oe 
a i ee en ee 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 219 


An associated vision is devoted to a comparison of the 
organs of the human body, the Microcosm [Fig. 103], to 
the parts of the macrocosmic scheme. Some of these views 
are set forth below (pp. 224-6). 

Another vision explains the influence of the heavenly 
bodies and of the ‘superior elements’ on the power of 
nature as exhibited on the surface of the earth. It is illus- 
trated by a charming miniature in the Lucca manuscript 
[Plate IT]. 


“I saw that the upper fiery firmament was stirred, so that as it were 
ashes were cast therefrom to earth, and they produced rashes and ulcers 
in men and animals and fruits.’ 


These effects are shown in the left upper quadrant 
of Plate II, where the ashes are seen proceeding from 
the lucidus ignis, the ‘upper fiery firmament.’ Two 
figures are seen, a female semi-recumbent, who lifts a fruit 
to her mouth, and a male figure fully recumbent, on whose 
legs a rash is displayed. The trees also in this quadrant 
show the effects of the ashes, two of them being denuded of 
fruit and foliage. 


‘Then I saw that from the ignis niger certain vapours (Nebulae) 
descended, which withered the verdure and dried up the moisture of 
the fields. The purus aether, however, resisted these ashes and vapours, 
seeking to hold back these plagues.’ 


These vapours may be seen in the right upper quad- 
rant of Plate II. They descend from the igmis niger, 
attenuate for a space in the purus aether, and then descend 
through the other zones on to an arid and parched land. 
Here are two husbandmen ; one sits forlornly clasping his 
axe, while the other leans disconsolately upon his hoe. On 
the legs of the latter a rash may be distinguished. 


* And looking again I saw that from the fortis et albus lucidusque aer 
certain other clouds reached the earth and infected men and beasts with 
sore pestilence, so that they were subjected to many ills even to the 
death, but the aer aquosus opposed that influence so that they were no 
hurt beyond measure.’ 


220 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE’ 


This scene is portrayed in the right lower quadrant of 
Plate II. Here is a husbandman in mortal anguish. He 
has gathered his basket of fruit and now lies stricken with 
the pestilence. His left hand is laid on his heart, while 
his right hangs listless on his thigh, pointing to tokens of 
plague upon his legs. Beyond lies the dead body of a 
beast on which a carrion bird has settled. 


‘ Again I saw that the moisture in the aer tenuis was as it were boiling 
above the surface of the earth, awakening the force of the earth and 
making fruits to grow.’ ! 


This happier scene is represented in the left lower 
quadrant of Plate II. Here the beneficent fertilizing 
influence is falling on trees and herbs, and the happy hus- 
bandmen are reaping its results. 

The main outline of the Liber Divinorum Operum, in 
which these visions are to be found, is borrowed from the 
work of her contemporary Bernard Sylvester of Tours, 
De mundi universitate sive megacosmus et microcosmus. In 
this composition, written about 1150 by a teacher in a 
cathedral school, gods and goddesses of the classical pan- 
theon flit across the stage as though the writer were a pagan. 
The mythology of Bernard is founded mainly on Plato’s 
Timaeus. 'The eternal seminaria of created things are men- 
tioned and the general line of thought is Neoplatonic. Thus 
the anima universalis of Neoplatonic writings can be identi- 
fied with the Nous of Bernard. ‘This principle is contrasted 
with primordial matter or Hyle. The general setting of 
Hildegard’s work is quite different, but Hildegard’s figure 
of the spirit of the Macrocosm is identical with Bernard’s 
Nous. Hyle, on the other hand, becomes in Hildegard’s 
plan the monstrous form, the emblem of brute matter, on ~ 
which the spirit of the universe tramples. 

Hildegard’s conception of macrocosm and microcosm, 
which was thus borrowed from Bernard Sylvester, has 
analogies also to those well-known figures illustrating the 


' Migne, col. 807. 


PLATE XIII 


ka widuera eletsat. gin : : "far. deber maficare con erence : 


7Y) WU}. oe 


VISION OF. THE ‘ ZELUS DEI’. 


From a MS. of Hildegard’s Scivias at Wiesbaden, written at Bingen about 1180. ‘This figure 
is a representation of a vision of migrainous origin. In its essential parts it is identical with 
Plate XII, and it recurs in the ‘reconstructed’ vision shown in Plate XIV. It should be 
compared to the other types of migrainous vision shown in the Frontispiece, in Plate XI, and in 
Figure 108. See page 233. 


220] 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 221 


supposed influence of the signs of the zodiac on the different 
parts of the body. Such figures, with the zodiacal symbols 
arranged around a figure of Christ, may be seen in manu- 
scripts anterior to Hildegard [Fig. 30] and may be traced 
back to pagan sources in which Hercules takes the place of 
Christ. The influence of the ‘ Melothesia ’—to give it the 
name assigned by Porphyry—has been traced through its 
period of efflorescence at the Renaissance [Fig. 38] right 
down to our own age and country, where it still appeals 
to the ignorant and foolish, and is still to be found in 
popular calendars and prophecies. 

Hildegard often interprets natural events by means of a 
peculiarly crude form of the doctrine of the parallelism of 
Macrocosm and Microcosm. ‘Thus she tells us that ‘ if 
the excess of waters below are drawn up to the clouds (by 
the judgement of God in the requital of sinners), then the 
moisture from the aer aquosus transudes through the fortis 
et albus lucidusque aer as a draught drunk transudes into 
the urinary bladder; and the same waters descend in an 
inundation.’ ! 

Again, events in the body of man are most naively ex- 
plained on the basis of the nature of the external world as 
she has pictured it. 

‘The humours at times rage fiercely as a leopard and again they are 
softened, going backwards as a crab; or they may show their diversity 
by leaping and goring as a stag, or they may be as a wolf in their ravening, 
and yet again they may invade the body of man after the manner of both 
wolf and crab. Or else they may show forth their strength unceasingly 
as a lion, or as a serpent they may go now softly, now violently, and at 
times they may be gentle as a lamb and at times again they may growl 
as an angered bear, and at times they may partake of the nature of the 
lamb and of the serpent.’? These animals will be seen represented in 
Plate II and in Figs. ror and 103. 

The word cancer is here used, but the crab goes sideways, 
not backwards. By cancer Hildegard, who had never seen 
the sea, means the freshwater crayfish Astacus fluviatilis, an 
animal common in the Rhine basin. It is the head of a 

1 Migne, col. 757. 2 Migne, cols. 3, 791-2. 


222 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


crayfish that is figured in the miniatures of the vision of 
the macrocosm in the Lucca manuscript. 

Having completed her general survey of the Macrocosm 
and having investigated in detail the structure of man’s 
body, the Microcosm, in terms of the greater universe, and 
discussed the influence of the heavenly bodies on terrestrial 
events, Hildegard turns to the internal structure of the ter- 
restrial sphere [Fig 94]. 

Upon the surface of the earth towards the east stands the 
building which symbolizes the aedificitum of the church, a 
favourite conception of our authoress. This church is 
surmounted by a halo, whence proceed a pair of pinions 
which extend the shelter over a full half of the earth’s 
circumference. As for the rest of the earth’s surface, part 
is within the wide-opened jaws of a monster, the Destroyer, 
and the remainder is beneath the surface of the ocean. 
Within the earth are five parts analogous, as she holds, to 
the five senses of man. An eastern clear arc and a western 
clouded one signify respectively the excellence of the 
Orient where Zion is situated, and the Cimmerian darkness 
of the occidental regions over which the shadow of the 
dragon is cast. Centrally is a quadrate area divided into 
three zones where the qualities of heat and cold and of a 
third intermediate ‘ temperateness ’ (temperies) are stored. 
North and south of this are two areas where purgatory is 
situate. Each is shaped like a truncated cone, and composed 
also of three sectors. Souls suffer the torment of flame in 


one section, the torment of water in another, while in the 


third or intermediate section lurk monsters and creeping 
things which add to the miseries of purgatory or at times 
come forth to earth’s surface to plague mankind [Fig. 94]. 
These northern and southern sections exhibit by their re- 
versed arrangement the belief in the antipodean inversion 
of climate, an idea hinted at several times in Hildegard’s 
writings, but more definitely illustrated by a figure of 
Herrade de Landsberg [Fig. 96]. 

Macrocosmic schemes of the type illustrated by the text 


eM 


*” 


Ff 
; 
4 


PARLE ORO BEER 


Fie. ;103—-NOUS PERVADED BY THE GODHEAD AND EMBRACING BOTH THE 
MACROCOSM AND THE MICROCOSM 
From a MS. at Lucca of Hildegard’s Liber Divinorum Operum Simplicis Hominis, written about 1200. 


For 
222] description see page 217. 


a 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 223 


of Hildegard and by the figures of the Lucca MS. had a great 
vogue in mediaeval times, and were passed on to later 
ages. Some passages in Hildegard’s work read curiously 
like extracts from Paracelsus (1491-1541), and it is not 
hard to find a link between these two difficult and mystical 
writers. ‘T'rithemius, the teacher of Paracelsus, was abbot 
of Sponheim, an important settlement almost within sight 
of Hildegard’s convents on the Rupertsberg and Disiboden- 
berg. ‘Trithemius studied Hildegard’s writings with great 
care and attached much importance to them, so that they 
may well have influenced his pupil. 

The influence of mediaeval theories of the relation of 
Macrocosm and Microcosm is encountered among numerous 
Renaissance writers beside Paracelsus. But as knowledge 
accumulated, the difficulty in applying the details of the 
theory became ever greater. Facts were strained and_ 
mutilated more and more to make them fit the Pro- 
crustean bed of an outworn theory, which became 
untenable when the heliocentric system of Copernicus, 
Kepler, and Galileo replaced the geocentric and anthropo- 
centric systems of an earlier age. The idea of a close 
parallelism between the structure of man and of the wider 
universe was gradually abandoned by the scientific, while 
among the unscientific it degenerated and became little 
better than an insane obsession. As such it appears in the 
ingenious ravings of the English follower of Paracelsus, the 
Rosicrucian, Robert Fludd, who reproduced, often with 
fidelity, the systems which had some novelty five centuries 
before his time. As a similar fantastic obsession this 
once fruitful hypothesis still occasionally appears in modern 
works of perverted learning. 


§ 4. Hildegard’s View of the Structure of Man, the 
Microcosm 
One of the visions of the Liber Divinorum Operum is 
devoted to a description of man’s body according to the 
theory of the macrocosm and microcosm. 


224 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE ea 


An investigation of her account reveals the fact that 
she is making an independent attempt to fit the anatomical __ 
knowledge of her day into her favourite theory. Tounder- 
stand her results we must know something of the material _ 
on which she is drawing, as well as of the theory into which 
she is trying to fit it. a 

The list of works containing anatomical descriptions that 
was available to a German writer of the twelfth century is 
not long. A perusal of them reduces her sources of informa- __ 
tion to three. One of these was the book On the Natureof 
Man by Constantine the African (died 1087. See p.75). 
This book was translated by him about 1085, at the Bene- __ 
dictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, from some unknown 
Arabic original. The other anatomical work to which 
Hildegard was able to refer was a series of five diagrams 
representing respectively the arteries, veins, bones, nerves, 
and muscles [Fig. 104]. These diagrams were very wide- _ 
spread during the Middle Ages and were copied inthe most __ 
servile fashion for centuries. Her account of the structure _ 
of the body was also in part derived from the work of Hugh 
of St. Victor On the Members and Parts of Man. Onthis, 
however, her dependence is less direct than upon the other 
two. The resultant is a curious visionary system of 
anatomy, physiology, and pathology, which we set forthin 
an abbreviated translation :— 


“ The humours may pass to the liver, where wisdom is tested, having 
been already tempered in the brain by the strength of the spirit, and 
having absorbed its moisture so that now it is plump, strong, and healthy. 

“In the right of man is the liver and its great heat, so that the right — 
is swift to act and to work! . . . the vessels of the liver, affected by © 
the agitation of the humours, trouble the venules of the ear of man and 
sometimes confound the organ of hearing. .. . : : 

“I saw also that sometimes the humours seek the navel, which 
covers the viscera as a cap, and holds them in, lest they be dissipated, 


* An idea that occurs in Aristotle, Parts of Animals, ii, c. 2, but is rejected 
by Galen. 


‘extach fue’ 


Spek asees 


ate 


Fig. 104—AN ANATOMICAL DRAWING OF THE THIRTEENTH 
CENTURY, REPRESENTING THE VEINS 


From MS. Ashmole 399. See page 224. 
224] 


Pee eS 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 225 


and maintains their course and preserves the heat both of them and of 
the veins. . . 

‘And the same humours go to the vessels of the reins and of other 
members, and pass in their turn to the vessels of the spleen, and then 
to the lungs and to the heart ; and they meet the viscera on the left 
where they are warmed by the lungs, but the liver warms the right- 
hand side of the body. And the vessels of the brain, heart, lung, liver, 
and other parts carry strength to the reins, whose vessels descend to 
the legs, strengthening them; and returning along with the leg 
vessels, they unite with the virile organ or with the womb as the case 
may be. 

* Again, the muscles of the arms, legs, and thighs contain vessels full 
of humours; and just as the belly has within it viscera containing 
nourishment, so the muscles of arms, legs, and thighs have both vessels 
and the (contained) humours which preserve man’s strength... . 
But when a man runs or walks quickly, the nerves about the knees and the 
venules in the knees become distended. And since they are united 
with the vessels of the legs, which are numerous and intercommunicated 
in a net-like manner, they conduct the fatigue to the vessels of the liver, 
and thus they reach the vessels of the brain, and so send the fatigue 
throughout the body. 

‘The humours in man are distributed in just measure. But when 
they affect the veins of the liver, his humidity is decreased and also 
the humidity of the chest is attenuated ; so that thus dried, he falls 
into disease of such a nature that the phlegm is dry and toxic and ascends 
to the brain. There it produces headache and pain in the eyes and 
wasting of the marrow, and thus if the moon is in default he may develop 
the falling evil (epilepsy). 

‘The humidity also which is in the umbilicus is dispersed by the 
same humours, and turned into dryness and hardness, so that the 
flesh becomes ulcerated and scabby as though he were leprous, if indeed 
he do not actually become so. And the vessels of his testicles, being 
adversely affected by these humours, are dried up within them ; and thus, 
the humours being withdrawn, impetigos may arise ... and the 
marrow of the bones and the vessels of the flesh are dried up, and so the 
man becomes chronically ill, dragging out his days in languor. 

‘But sometimes the humours so affect breast and liver . . . that 
various foolish thoughts arise . . . and they ascend to the brain and 
infect it and again descend to the stomach and generate fevers there, so 
that the man is long sick. Yet again they vex the minor vessels of the 
ear with superfluity of phlegm ; or with the same phlegm they infect 
the vessels of the lung, so that he coughs and can scarce breathe and 
the phlegm may pass thence into the vessels of the heart and give 


a) 


226 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


pain there, or the pain may pass into the side, exciting pleurisy ; under 
such circumstances also, the moon being in defect, the man may lapse 
into the falling sickness.’ } 


Sometimes Hildegard’s visionary anatomical ideas can be 
paralleled among her contemporaries. ‘Thus the following 
passage on the relationship of the planets to the brain is 
well illustrated by a diagram of Herrade de Landsberg. 


* From the summit of the vessel of the brain to the extremity of the 
forehead seven equal spaces can be distinguished. Here the seven 
planets are designated, the uppermost planet in the highest part, the 
moon in front, the sun in the middle, and the other planets distributed 
among the other spaces’ [Fig. 105]. 


§ 5. Birth and Death and the Nature of the Soul 


The method by which the soul enters the body is set 
forth in a very striking vision in the Scivias and is illus- 
trated in the Wiesbaden Codex by a no less remarkable 
miniature [Fig. 106]. The soul, which contains the ele- 
ment of wisdom, passes into the infant’s body, while yet 
within the mother’s womb. The Wisdom of God is repre- 
sented as a four-square object, with its angles set to the 
four quarters of the earth, this form being the symbol of — 
stability. From it a long tube-like process descends into 
the mother’s womb. Down this there passes into the 
child a bright object, described variously as ‘ spherical ’ 
and as ‘ shapeless,’ which ‘ illumines the whole body,’ 
and becomes or develops into the soul. 

The birth scene is strikingly portrayed. In the foreground 
lies the mother with the head and shoulders supported and 
the right arm raised. In her womb is the infant in the 
position known to obstetricians as a ‘ transverse presenta- 
tion.” Around the child may be distinguished clear traces 
of the uterine membranes. Near the couch are ranged a 
group of ten figures who carry vessels containing the various 
qualities of the child. Above and to the left the Evil One 
may be seen pouring some noxious substance into one of 


1 Migne, cols. 792-3. 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 227 


these vessels, or perhaps abstracting some element of good. 
The whole scene suggests the familiar fairy story in which, 
while all bring pleasant gifts to the child’s birth, there 


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Fic, 105.—The Microcosm from Herrade de Landsberg’s Hortus Deliciarum. Overt 
the head of the figure are written the names of the seven planets. Air and fire stand 
one on each side, The inscription against the head may be rendered: ‘ The head of 
the microcosm is round like the heavenly sphere. In it are two eyes as the two 
luminaries shine in the heavens and there ate seven orifices adorn it like the seven 
heavens of harmony.’ Against the thorax is written: ‘In the chest is breath and 
cough like to winds and thunder.’ Against the abdomen: ‘Into the belly all things 
flow like rivers to the sea.’ By the legs stand the emblems of Earth and Water and the 
analogy is similarly carried on. 


228 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


comes at last the old witch or the ill-used relative who 
adds a quota of spitefulness. 
The scene is described and expounded as follows : 


‘ Behold, I saw upon earth men carrying milk in earthen vessels and 
making cheeses therefrom. Some was of the thick kind from which 
firm cheese is made, some of the thinner sort from which more porous 
[tenuis] cheese is made, and some was mixed with corruption [#abes] and 
of the sort from which bitter cheese is made. And I saw the likeness 
of a woman having a complete human form within her womb. And 
then, by a secret disposition of the Most High Craftsman, a fiery sphere 
having none of the lineaments of a human body possessed the heart 
of the form, and reached the brain and transfused itself through all the 
members... - 

‘And I saw that many circling eddies possessed the sphere and 
brought it earthward, but with ever renewed force it returned upward 
and with wailing asked, “‘ I, wanderer that I am, where am I? ” “ In 
death’s shadow.” ‘‘ And where go I?” “In the way of sinners.” 
‘And what is my hope?” ‘“* That of all wanderers.”’’ } 


The vision is then further explained as follows : 


‘Those whom thou seest carrying milk in earthen vessels are in 
the world, men and women alike, having in their bodies the seed 
of mankind from which are procreated the various kinds of human 
beings. Part is thickened because the seed in its strength is well 
and truly concocted, and this produces forceful men to whom are 
allotted gifts both spiritual and carnal. .. . And some had cheeses 
less firmly curdled, for they in their feebleness have seen imperfectly 
tempered, and they raise offspring mostly stupid, feeble, and useless. 
. . . And some was mixed with corruption . . . for the seed in that 
brew cannot be rightly raised, it is invalid and makes misshapen men 
who are bitter, distressed, and oppressed of heart, so that they may not 
lift their gaze to higher things? ... And often in forgetfulness 
of God and by the mocking devil, a mistio is made of the man and of 
the woman, and the thing born therefrom is deformed, for parents who 
have sinned against me return to me crucified in their children.’® 
[Compare Constantine, De humana natura, sections ‘ De perfectione’ 
and ‘ De impeditione.’] rly 


Hildegard thus supposes that the qualities and form of a 
child are inherited from its parents, but that two factors, 
the formless soul from the Almighty and the corrupt fluid 


1 Migne, col. 415. 2 Migne, col. 421. — ® Migne, col. 424. 


Fic. 106.—THE ARRIVAL OF THE SOUL IN THE 
BODY OF THE INFANT 


From a MS. at Wiesbaden of Hildegard’s Scivias, written at 
Bingen about 1180. For description see pages 226-8. 


228] 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 229 


instilled by the devil, also contribute to the character of 
offspring. ‘This is the usual mediaeval view and is broadly 
portrayed in the figure. 

The strange conception of the body being formed from 
the seed as cheese is precipitated and curdled from milk, 
is doubtless derived from a passage in the Book of Job: 


Hast thou not poured me out as milk, 

And curdled me like cheese ? 

Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, 

And knit me together with bones and sinews.! (fob x. 10, 11.) 


When the body has thus taken shape there enters into it 
the soul, which, though at first shapeless, gradually assumes 
the form of its host, the earthly tabernacle; and at death 
the soul departs through the mouth with the last breath, as 
a fully developed naked human shape, to be received by 
devils or angels as the case may be [Fig. 107]. 

During its residence in the body the soul plays the part 
usually assigned to it in the earlier mediaeval psychology. 
Hildegard regards the brain as having three chambers or 
divisions, corresponding to the three parts of man’s nature, 
an idea encountered in the writings of St. Augustine. 
Parallel to these there are, she tells us : 


‘three elements in man by which he shows life; to wit, soul (anima), 
body (corpus), and sense (sensus). ‘The soul vivifies the body and inspires 
the senses ; the body attracts the soul and reveals the senses ; the senses 
affect the soul and allure the body. For the soul rules the body as a 
flame throws light into darkness, and it has two principal powers or limbs, 
the intellect (cntellectus) and the will (voluntas). . . . For the intellect 
is attached to the soul as the arms to the body; for as the body is pro- 
longed into arms with fingers and hands attached, so the intellect is 
produced from the soul by the operations of its various powers.’ ? 


We need follow Hildegard no further into her maze of 
micro-cosmology, in which an essential similarity and 
1The Aristotelian writings also compare the transformation of the 
material humours into the child’s body with the solidification of milk in 


the formation of cheese. 
2 Migne, col. 425. 


230 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


relationship is discovered between the qualities of the soul, 
the constitution of the external cosmos, and the structure 
of the body, a thought which appears as the culmination of 
her entire system and provides the clue to the otherwise 
incomprehensible whole. 


§ 6. The Pathological Basis of the Visions 


For the physical accompaniments and phenomena of 
Hildegard’s visions we have three separate lines of evidence : 
her own account; the statements of her contemporary 
biographers, 'Theodoric and Godefrid ; and the miniatures 
of the Wiesbaden Codex, probably prepared under her 
supervision. 

It is clear that despite the length and activity of her life 
Hildegard did not enjoy normal health. From a very early 
age she was the subject of trances and visions, and from time 
to time she was prostrated with protracted illness. 


“God punished me for a time by laying me on a bed of sickness so that 


the blood was dried in my veins, the moisture in my flesh,andthe marrow  __ 


in my bones, as though the spirit were about to depart from my body. 
In this affliction I lay thirty days while my body burned as with fever, and 
it was thought that this sickness was laid upon me for a punishment. And 
my spirit also was ailing, and yet was pinned to my flesh, so that while I 
did not die, yet did I not altogether live. And throughout those days 
I watched a procession of angels innumerable who fought with Michael 
and against the Dragon and won the victory . . . And one of them called 


out to me, “ Eagle, Eagle,? why sleepest thou? ... All the eagles are 


watching thee. . . . Arise! for it is dawn, and eat and drink”... 
And then the whole troop cried out with a mighty voice . . . “ Is not the 
time for passing come? Arise, maiden, arise!” Instantly my body and 
my senses came back into the world ; and seeing this, my daughters who 
were weeping around me lifted me from the ground and placed me on my 
bed, and thus I began to get back my strength. 

‘ But the affliction laid upon me did not fully cease; yet was my 
spirit daily strengthened. . . . I was yet weak of flesh, timid of mind, 
and fearful of pain . . . but in my soul I said, “ Lord, Lord, all that 


1 Especially in the Liber Divinorum Operum, pars 1, vis. iv. 
4 The eagle is frequently in mediaeval writings a eveniiot of the power 
of Divine Grace. 


—DEPARTURE AND FATE OF THE SOUL 


OF. 
at Wiesbaden of Hildegard’ 


I 


Fic 


For 


fe) 

lo) 

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| ao 

oa) 

3} 

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niet 

3 

q 

5) 

on 

g 

jaa) 

~ 

S 

q 

as 

TaNCGN 

Ronen 

Sa 
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SS 

SO 

‘So 

S 

n & 
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From a MS 


30] 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 231 


Thou puttest upon me I know to be good . . . for have I not earned these 
things from my youth up?” Yet was I assured He would not permit 
my soul to be thus tortured in the future life... . Thus was my body 
seethed as ina pot . . . yet gave I thanks to God, for if this affliction had 
not been from Him I had surely not lived so long. But although I was 
thus tortured, yet did I, in supernal vision, often repeat, cry aloud, and 
write those things which the Holy Spirit willed to put before me.’ 

“Three years were thus passed during which the Cherubim thus 
pursued me with a flaming sword . . . and at length my spirit revived 
within me and my body was restored again as to its veins and marrows, 
and thus I was healed.’ 2 


This illness of Hildegard was the longest and most 
typical but by no means the only one through which she 
passed. She describes her affliction as continuing for long 
_ periods, but there can be little doubt, from her history, 
that during much of the time she was able to carry on some 
at least of her functions as head of a religious house. 

The condition from which she was suffering was clearly 
a functional nervous disorder ; this is sufficiently demon- 
strated by her repeated complete recoveries, her activity 
between the attacks, and the great age to which she lived. 
At first sight the long procession of figures and visions 
suggests that she might have been the victim of a condition 
similar to that of which Jerome Cardan has left us so com- 
plete apersonal record. But on reading the books of visions 
the reader will easily convince himself that we are not here 
dealing with a dreami-state. The visions are indeed essen- 
tially vivid. ‘'These visions which I saw,’ she repeatedly 
assures us, ‘ I beheld neither in sleep, nor in dream, nor in 
madness, nor with my carnal eyes, nor with the ears of the 
flesh, nor in hidden places; but wakeful, alert, with the 
eyes of the spirit and with the inward ears, I perceived them 
in open view and according to the will of God. And how 
this was compassed is hard indeed for human flesh to 
search out.’ 3 

Nevertheless, though the visions exhibit great originality 
and creative power—the reader will often be reminded of 


1 Migne, col. 110. 2 Migne, col. 111. § Migne, col. 384. 


232 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


William Blake—all or nearly all present certain characters 
incommon. In all a prominent feature is a point or a group 
of points of light, which shimmer and move, usually in a 
wavelike manner, and are most often interpreted as stars or 
flaming eyes [Frontispiece]. In quite a number of cases 
one light, larger than the rest, exhibits a series of concentric 
circular figures of wavering form [Plate XI]; and often 
definite fortification figures are described, radiating in 
some cases from a coloured area [Plates XII, XIII]. Often 
the lights gave that impression of working, boiling, or fer- 
menting, described by so many visionaries, from Ezekiel 
onwards. | 

This outline of the visions Hildegard herself variously 
interpreted. We give examples from the more typical of 
these visions, in which the medical reader or the sufferer 
from migraine will, we think, easily recognize the symptoms 
of ‘scintillating scotoma.’ Some of the illuminations, here 
reproduced in their original colours, will confirm this 
interpretation. 


‘ I saw a great star most splendid and beautiful, and with it an exceeding 
multitude of falling sparks which with the star followed southward. And 
they examined Him upon His throne almost as something hostile, and 
turning from Him they sought rather the north. And suddenly they 
were all annihilated, being turned into black coals . . . and cast into the 
abyss that I could see them no more.’! [Frontispiece.] 


This vision, illustrated by the beautiful figure of stars 
falling into the waves, is interpreted by her as signifying 
the Fall of the Angels. 

The concentric circles appear in numerous visions, and 
notably in that of the Days of the Creation of the World and 
the Fall of Man, illustrated by what is perhaps the most 
beautiful of all the miniatures of the Wiesbaden Codex 
[Fig. 108]. It is in this concentric form that Hildegard 
most frequently pictures the Almighty, and the idea again 
appears in the eleventh miniature, here reproduced in its 
original colours, which she describes as ‘a most shining light 


’ Scivias, lib. iii, vis. 1 ; Migne, col. 565. 


{AN 


Fic, 108.—THE DAYS OF CREATION AND THE FALL OF 


From a MS. at Wiesbaden of Hildegard’s Scivias, written at Bingen about 1180. See page 232. 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 233 


and within it the appearance of a human form of a sapphire 
colour which glittered with a gentle but sparkling glow’ 
[Plate XI]. Appearances of this type are recorded again 
and again. 

The type with fortification figures is encountered in a 
whole series of visions, of which we reproduce the account 
and illumination of the Zelus Dei [Plate XIII, and Sedens 
Lucidus, Plate XIT]. 


“I looked and behold, a head of marvellous form .. . of the colour 
of flame and red as fire, and it had a terrible human face gazing northward 
in great wrath. From the neck downward I could see no further form, 
for the body was altogether concealed . . . but the head itself I saw, 
like the bare form of a human head. Nor was it hairy like a man, nor 
indeed after the manner of a woman, but it was more like to a man than 
a woman, and very awful to look upon. 

‘It had three wings of marvellous length and breadth, white as a 
dazzling cloud. They were not raised erect but spread apart one from 
the other, and the head rose slightly above them . . . and at times they 
would beat terribly and again would be still. No word uttered the head, 
but remained altogether still, yet now and again beating with its extended 

wings.’ 

From the head extended a series of fortification lines, and 
this peculiar form of vision is reproduced on several occa- 
sions and variously interpreted [Plate XIII]. It is united 
with similar visions in what we regard as a reconstructed 
conception of exceedingly complex structure. This she 
claims to see separately, and she interprets it as the 
aedifictum of the city of God [Plate XIV]. Such recon- 
structed visions are clearly of a different type and origin to 
the simple group in which a shining light or group of lights 
is encountered and interpreted as a speaking figure. 

Hildegard’s visions, perhaps without exception, contain 
this element of a blinding or glittering light, which she inter- 
prets in a more or less spiritual manner. We terminate our 
account with the passage in which she sums up her ex- 
periences of it. 


“From my infancy,’ she says, ‘ up to the present time, I being now more 
than seventy years of age, I have always seen this light in my spirit and 


234 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


not with external eyes, nor with any thoughts of my heart nor with help 
from the senses. But my outward eyes remain open and the other cor- 
‘poreal senses retain their activity. The light which I see is not located 
but yet is more brilliant than the sun, nor can I examine its height, length, 
or breadth, and I name it the “ cloud of the living light.” And as sun, 
moon, and stars are reflected in water, so the writings, sayings, virtues, and 
works of men shine in it before me. And whatever I thus see in vision 
the memory thereof remains long with me. Likewise I see, hear, and 
understand almost in a moment and I set down what I thus learn. .. . 

‘ But sometimes I behold within this light another light which I name 
“ the Living Light itself”? . . . And when I look upon it every sadness 
and pain vanishes from my memory, so that I am again as a simple maid 
and not as an old woman.! 

‘ And now that I am over seventy years old my spirit, according to the 
will of God, soars upward in vision to the highest heaven and to the farthest 
stretch of the air and spreads itself among different peoples to regions 
exceeding far from me here, and thence I can behold the changing clouds 
and the mutations of all created things; for all these I see not with the 


outward eye or ear, nor do I create them from the cogitations of my heart. 


. but within my spirit, my eyes being open, so that I have never suf- 
fered any terror when they left me.’ ? 


§ 7. Sources of Hildegard’s Scientific Knowledge 

In our discussion we have often referred to works con- 
sulted by Hildegard. In this section we have to consider 
her sources in more general terms. Her imaginative power 
and mystical tendency make an exhaustive search into the 
origin of her ideas a difficult task. Unfortunately, she does 
not herself refer to any of her sources other than the Biblical 
books ; to have cited profane writers would have involved 
the abandonment of her claim that her knowledge was 
derived by immediate inspiration from on high. Neverthe- 
less, it is possible to form some idea, on internal evidence, 
of the origin of many of her scientific conceptions. 

The most striking point concerning the sources of Hilde- 
gard’s mystical writings is negative. ‘There is no German 
linguistic element distinguishable, and the writings show 
little or no trace of native German folk-lore. She claims 
to be a simple unlearned woman, unskilled in the Latin 
tongue; but with the testimony before us of the writings 

1 Migne, col. 18. 2 Migne, col. 18. 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 235 


themselves, and of her use of Latin, the statement may be 
set down to a mere literary formula, accentuated by the 
desire to magnify the element of inspiration. So far from 
her having been illiterate, we perceive that not only the form 
—which might have been modified by a contemporary 
editor—but also the structure and details of her writings 
betray much painstaking study of the works of others. 

Hildegard lived at rather too early a date to drink fully at 
that broad stream of new knowledge that was soon to flow 
into Europe through Paris from its reservoir in Moslem 
Spain. Such drops from that source as may have reached 
her must have trickled in either from Italy, with the works 
of Constantine the African (died 1087), or perhaps from the 
Jews who had settled in the Upper Rhineland. 

Her science is primarily of the usual degenerate Greek 
type, of the earlier Middle Ages. We may distinguish in 
it disintegrated fragments of Aristotle and Galen, coloured 
and altered by the customary mediaeval attempts to bring 
theory into line with scriptural phraseology, though a 
degree of independence is at times obtained by the visionary 
form in which her views are set. Hildegard exhibits, like 
all mediaeval writers on science, the Aristotelian theory of 
the elements, but her statement of the doctrine is illumin- 
ated by flashes of her own thoughts and is coloured 
by suggestions from St. Augustine, Isidore of Seville, 
Bernard Sylvester, and from writings attributed to 
Boethius. 

The great translator from the Arabic, Gerard of Cremona 
(1114-87), was her contemporary, and his labours at 
Toledo made available for Latin readers a vast number of 
scientific works which had previously circulated only among 
Arabic-speaking peoples. Several of these works, notably 
Messahalah’s De Orbe, and the Aristotelian De Caelo et 
Mundo, and parts of the Meteorologica, which contain 
material on the form of the Universe and on the nature of the 
elements, evidently reached the Rhineland in time to be 
used by Hildegard. On the subject of the form of the earth 


236 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


Hildegard expressed herself definitely as a spherist, a point 
of view more widely accepted in the earlier Middle Ages 
than is perhaps generally supposed. She considers in the 
usual mediaeval fashion that this globe of ours is surrounded 
by celestial spheres that influence terrestrial events. But 
while she claims that human affairs are controlled, under 
God, by the heavenly cosmos, she yet commits herself to 
none of that more detailed astrological doctrine that was 
developing in her time, and came to efflorescence in the 
following centuries. In this respect she follows the earlier 
and more scientific spirit of such writers as Messahalah, 
rather than the wilder theories of her own age. The short- 
ness and simplicity of Messahalah’s tract on the sphere made 
it very popular. It was one of the earliest to be translated 
into Latin ; and its contents would account for the change 
which, as we shall see, came over Hildegard’s scientific 
views in her later years. 

The general conception of the universe as a series of 
concentric elemental spheres had penetrated to Western 


Europe centuries before Hildegard’s time. Nevertheless, 


the prophetess presents it to her audience as a new and 
striking revelation. ‘There is another favourite mediaeval 
cosmic theory, however, which she developed along indivi- 
dual lines. Hildegard exhibits in a peculiar and original 
form the doctrine of the macrocosm and microcosm (see 
pp.224-6). Hardly distinguishable in the Scivias (1141-50), 
it appears definitely in the Liber Vitae Meritorum (1158-62), 
in which work, however, it takes no very prominent place, 
and is largely overlaidand concealed by other lines of thought. 
But in the Liber Divinorum Operum (1163-70) this belief 
is the main theme. The book is indeed an elaborate attempt 
to demonstrate a similarity and relationship between the 
nature of the Godhead, the constitution of the universe, 
and the structure of man, and it thus forms a valuable com- 
pendium of the science of the day viewed from the standpoint 
of this theory. 

From whence did she derive the theory of macrocosm 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 237 


and microcosm ? In outline its elements were easily acces- 
sible to her in Isidore’s De Rerum Natura. But the work 
of Bernard Sylvester, De mundi universttate sive megacosmus 
et microcosmus, corresponds so closely both in form, in 
spirit, and sometimes even in phraseology to the Luber 
Divinorum Operum, that Hildegard must have had access 
to it. Bernard’s work can be dated between the years 
1145-53. This would correspond well with the appearance 
of his doctrines in the Liber Vitae Meritorum (1158-62) 
and their full development in the Liber Divinorum Operum 
(1163-70). 

Another older contemporary with whom Hildegard 
presents points of contact is the mystical writer Hugh of 
Saxony (1096-1141), head of the monastic school of St. 
Victor at Paris. In Hugh’s writings the doctrine of the 
relation of macrocosm and microcosm is more veiled than 
with Bernard Sylvester. Nevertheless, the symbolic uni- 
verse in his work The Mystic Noah’s Ark is on the lines 
of Hildegard’s belief, and presents many parallels to the 
visions of Hildegard. 

At Hildegard’s date very complex cabalistic systems in- 
volving the doctrine of macrocosm and microcosm were 
being elaborated by the Jews, and Rabbinic mysticism 
specially flourished in her district. The famous traveller 
Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Bingen during Hilde- 
gard’s lifetime, tells us that he found there a congregation 
of his people. It is clear from her writings that she was 
familiar with Jews, and it is possible that she may have 
derived some of the very complex macrocosmic conceptions, 
with which her last work is crowded, from local Jewish 
students. 

The Alsatian Abbess, Herrade de Landsberg (died 1195), 
a contemporary of Hildegard, developed the microcosm 
theory along similar lines. A combination of circumstances 
thus make it probable that the theory, in the form in which 
these writers present it, reached the Upper Rhineland some- 
where about the middle or latter half of the twelfth century, 


“f 


238 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


and that it was conveyed by works coloured by Neoplatonism 
and depending on Arabic sources. 


Apart from the Biblical books, the work which made the 


deepest impression on Hildegard was Augustine’s City of 


God, which forms the background of a large part of the — 


Scivias. Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Apocalypse among the 


Biblical books, the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Shepherd of a 


Hermas among Apocryphal books, contain a lurid type of 
vision which her own spiritual experiences enabled her 


to utilize, and which fitted in well with her microcosmic 


doctrines. Ideas on the harmony and disharmony of the 
elements she picked up from the Wisdom of Solomon and 


from the Pauline writings, supplemented by Isidore of 


Seville. 
Her figure of the Church in the Scivias reminds us irre- 


sistibly of Boethius’ vision of the gracious feminine form of — 


Philosophy, and Boethius was very widely read in Hilde- 
gard’s day. The visions of the punishments of Hell which 


Hildegard recounts in the Liber Vitae Meritorum bear — a 


resemblance to the work of her contemporary Benedictine, 


the monk Alberic the younger of Monte Cassino (110I— 


c. 1160), to whom Dante also became indebted. 
Hildegard repeatedly assures us that most of her know- 
ledge was revealed to her in waking visions. Some of these, 


we have seen, had a pathological basis and she was asufferer 


from a condition that would nowadays probably be classified 


as hystero-epilepsy. ‘Too much stress, however, can easily — 


be laid on the ecstatic presentment of her scientific views. — 


Visions, it must be remembered, were a common literary 
device at the period. Her contemporary Benedictine sister, 


Elizabeth of Schénau, as well as numerous successors, as for 


example Gertrude of Robersdorf, adopted the same frame- 
work for their message. The use of the vision for this 


purpose remained popular for centuries, and we may say 


of these writers, as of Dante, that the visions gave, not the 
genius nor the poetic inspiration, but the form merely in 
which they were realized. | 


PLATE XIV 


© 


ry. Q, 4 feof dé muluf ¢ wmtmdum 


y: 


feraetart. poi, 
fed comp | pordinact min 


ae 


haw! 
Palin 


~ 
Pe 


‘RECONSTRUCTED’ VISION OF ‘THE HEAVENLY CITY’ 
(Compare Plates XII and XIII.) 


represented in Plates XII and XIII reappear here. 


From a MS. of Hildegard’s Scivias at Wiesbaden, written at Bingen about 1180. Note that the visions 
The other parts of this picture are represented separately 
in other miniatures in the same MS. See page 233 
238] 


2 


THE VISIONS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 239 


The contemporaries of Hildegard who provide the closest 
analogy to her are Elizabeth of Schénau (died 1165), whose 
visions are recounted in her life by Eckbert, and Herrade 
de Landsberg, Abbess of Hohenburg in Alsace, the priceless 
manuscript of whose Garden of Delights was destroyed in 
the siege of Strassburg in 1870. With Elizabeth of Schénau, 
who lived in her neighbourhood, Hildegard was in frequent 
correspondence. With Herrade she is not known to have 
had direct communication; but the two were contem- 
poraries, lived not very far apart, and under similar political 
and cultural conditions. Elizabeth’s visions present some 
striking analogies to those of Hildegard, while the figures of 
_ Herrade, of which copies have fortunately survived, often 
suggest the illustrations of the Wiesbaden or of the Lucca 
manuscripts of the works of Hildegard. 

In fine, Hildegard presents us with the science of the 
Dark Ages just emerging into the Arabian twilight. In 
spite of the extreme mystical form in which her material 
is cast, we can discern the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic 
tendencies which the new Arabian science was conveying 
to Western Europe. We can perceive in Hildegard some- 
thing of the nature of a complete and coherent philosophy, 
which separates her from the ages that went before her. 
Hildegard’s works are heralds of the dawn of a new move- 
ment. 


VII 
THE SCHOOL OF SALERNO AND ITS LEGENDS 


§ 1. Introduction ; : : ; 3 : : . p. 240 
§ 2. The Four Masters ‘ owes j : : ~ p. 241 
§ 3. ‘The Ladies of Salerne’ ; i é - Pp. 243 
§ 4. The Falstfications of Constantine the Afriaas arya te praq4. 
§ 5. Salerno and the King of England . $ ‘ ‘ - P. 245 


ee ntroduction 


THE earliest European institution to develop an organization 
that bore a semblance to a university is said to have been the 
medical school at Salerno, an ancient seaport in southern 
Italy not far from Naples. For centuries the Byzantine 
Empire, securely ensconced on the Adriatic sea-board, 
disputed the mastery of southern Italy with native chiefs, 
and, from the eighth century onwards, with Saracens 
also. The prevailing language of the South remained, 
even into modern times, a dialect of Greek. .'The imperfect 
grasp of the Byzantines, however, gave an opportunity for 
the entrance of other tongues. A Latin speech of a peculiar 
southern type was spoken in many places; in others 
Greek was replaced by some form of Arabic speech. Nor 
were Latin, Greek, and Saracen cultures the only competi- 
tors. Material and literary remains combine to tell us of 
a considerable development of a Jewish culture in this 
region. 

Into this welter of futile and static archaism, of linguistic 
and cultural strife, three great solvent forces entered. 
First came the stimulus of Moslem energy and enterprise. 
Secondly, there was the Norman invasion and conquest, 
with the resulting reorganization of society and the streng- 
thening of law. Thirdly, there was Jewish learning and 


a) 


; f : ; a ; : 
eee ee ee ee ee | ee amy Gliese ae ee 


ee ae 
Ce. “eS, = 


SCHOOL OF SALERNO AND ITS LEGENDS 24! 


the Jewish habit of syncretizing. The finished product 
of these forces at Salerno was the first medical school in 
Europe which flourished in the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries. But in 1224 a university was formally instituted 
at Naples by the Emperor Frederick II. This measure 
was fatal to the neighbouring school, and the importance 
of Salerno immediately began to wane, although the 
literary activity of the place continued to some extent, 
and the school prolonged a progressively more feeble 
existence to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It 
gradually became a place of ‘bogus degrees.’ When 
Napoleon closed it in 1811, it was but a corpse that he slew. 

As with all established things, legends had gathered round 
the Salernitan School. All ancient institutions tend to 
develop such stories to account for their origin. The 
school of Salerno, as we may more than suspect, was never 
really ‘ founded ’ at all, rather it ‘just growed.’ It was a 
natural product of certain very peculiar and complex 
cultural surroundings. To follow all its legends would be 
quite beyond our purpose; we shall, however, discuss 
four, of peculiar interest and of peculiar persistence. 


§ 2. The Four Masters 


The first of our legends relates that ‘ the school of Salerno 
was founded by four masters, a Greek, a Latin, an Arab, 
and a Jew.’ A book is in existence actually fathered on 
these ‘ four masters.’ Their historicity was credited until 
quite modern times, and is assumed in the works of several 
living historians, though it is generally scouted by critical 
writers. Yet the idea of the foundation of the school by 
a Greek, a Latin, an Arab, and a Jew, though not literally 
true, does correspond, as we have seen, to the mingled 
influences under which the school arose. Can we associate 
it with any historical individual ? The names mentioned 
in the legend have not been traced back to any real per- 
sonages. But there is an historical personage who seems to 
unite the four masters in himself, and seems to typify 

16 


242 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


in his own person the influences under which the school 
of Salerno arose. ‘This is the Jew Donnolo. 

The name Donnolo is but a variation of Domnulus, a 
diminutive of Dominus, and his full name was Shabbethai 
ben Abraham ben Joel. He was born near Otranto in 913, 


and he died there about 984. His life course therefore 


corresponds to the period which just precedes the time when 
our records of the medical school of Salerno begin. He 
represents the legendary stratum. When he was twelve 
years of age, Donnolo and his family were captured by 


Moslem raiders, and carried off to Palermo, which had 


long been under Moslem rule. While a Saracen prisoner 
Donnolo made his first acquaintance with the Arabic 
language. After a time he was ransomed by relatives and 
returned to Otranto, and later he practised medicine there 
and at Rossano. A considerable fragment has survived 
of a medical treatise by him. At Otranto Donnolo managed 
to secure a teacher of Arabic from Baghdad. ‘The fact 
that he was able to do so bears witness to the mixed character 
of the population of South Italy at that date. He learned 
from him the wisdom of the East : he afterwards claimed to 
have ‘ studied all the sciences of the Greeks, Arabs, Baby- 
lonians, and Indians.’ 

This hankering after Eastern learning may seem a strange 
thing to us, but we must recall the circumstances of the 
times. During the centuries between the eighth and 
twelfth, the hegemony of the philosophical and scientific 
world, as of the world of arms and affairs, lay not with 
Christendom but with Islam, whose sway extended athwart 
the world from India to the Atlantic [Fig. 32]. ‘Teeming 
with intellectual activity, this great stretch of lands became 
united not only by a religion but also by a language. From 
Andalusia to Persia the tongue of the Koran was used for 
the purpose of learning and philosophy, and mediaeval 
Islam thus enjoyed an advantage never attained by any 
civilization of like extent. In such a civilization there 


had naturally grown up a portentous accumulation of — 


aa 


SCHOOL OF SALERNO AND ITS LEGENDS 243 


scientific and medical works. ‘These were based on the 
heritage of Greek science that Islam had received from 
ancient Greece, mainly through Syriac sources. In this 
great Arabic literature advances had been made in some 
departments, notably in mathematics, though in most 
departments, as in medicine, the Arabian material was a 
deterioration from the best Greek standards. Such as it 
was, however, it was the most effective and most living 
then available. It was material of this sort that Donnolo 
studied. 

Donnolo’s medical work is written in Hebrew, but in a 
peculiar Hebrew that contains many Arabic idioms and a 
few Arabic words. The basis of the treatment detailed in 
it is in many respects that usual in the Arabic medical works 
of ultimate Greek origin. Of some of the herbs he mentions 
he gives the Greek form, of others the Latin form—in both 
cases transliterated into Hebrew. We know, too, both 
from his own statements and from those of his contemporary 
St. Nilus of Rossano, that Donnolo had travelled among 
the Latins. 

Have we not therefore here a very personification of the 
first legend of Salerno? It is untrue that the school was 
founded by a Greek, a Latin, an Arab, and a Jew; but it 
is true that the four influences that those names represent 
were at work in South Italy in the tenth century. We 
find an individual in South Italy practising the art of medi- 
cine and exhibiting the influence of all four cultures in his 
writings. As in so many cases, therefore, we may discern 
an element of truth at the back of the legend, and may treat 
it, like many other legends, as but “‘ history misunderstood.”’ 
It is these four cultural influences, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, 
and Arabic, that we see being welded together as the first 
university in Europe emerges into the light of historic day. 


§ 3. ‘The Ladies of Salerne’ 


The second legend is that of the ‘ ladies of Salerne.’ The 
claim has often been maintained that Salerno was quite 


244 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


unique among mediaeval institutions in the free way in which 
both women and Jews were admitted to its teaching, even 
in the early period. Alas ! as regards the ‘ ladies of Salerne ’ 
at least, the cold light of history dissipates the romantic 
story! There, as elsewhere in the earlier Middle Ages, 
women doubtless acted as midwives and nurses, and to 
this extent they may have been connected with the medical 
school. But the works to which their names have been 
connected with such assurance, where are they? Let us 
glance at the answer. 

A lady of Salerno, known as Trotula, whose life course 
is placed in the earlier eleventh century, is said to have been 
the authoress of the only two books by Salernitan women 
that the ages have spared to us. Her name passed long 
ago into the fairy-tales as Dame Trot, and has been known 
in every nursery for four hundred years. Alas! she had 
no real existence. The treatises by the so-called Trotula 
are in fact compilations from sources far more ancient 
than the Middle or even the Dark Ages. The very name 
Trotula is due to a misunderstanding. One Trottus, 
indeed, there was, a doctor of Salerno, and a mere male. 
His works, or rather his compilations, were spoken of as 
the Trotula, according to a common habit of the Italian 
schools. As these works happened to deal with aspects 
of women’s life and contained something of the ‘ Peeping 
Tom’ about them, they were naturally mothered on a 
woman. ‘The situation is not devoid of humour—and thus 
fades into nothingness the first woman professor whose 
life a learned medical historian once essayed to write |? 


§ 4. The Falsifications of Constantine the African 


We now turn to shatter the reputation of the most 
considerable and most influential writer that the school of 
Salerno has produced, Constantinus Afer. The ° High 
Salernitan ’ period, when the fame of the medical school 


1 Salvatore De Renzi, Collectio Salernitana, 5 vols. (Naples, 1852-8), 1. 
149-61. — “tight 


SCHOOL OF SALERNO AND ITS LEGENDS 245 


was at its height, is inaugurated by the works of Constantine 
the African, of Salerno and Monte Cassino, a Christian 
convert from Islam, who died in 1087. He is an historical 
character right enough, and we now have a considerable 
amount of information about him, most of it by no means 
to his credit. 

The works that bear Constantine’s name are all, in 
fact, versions of the compositions of Greek medical writers, 
but they are neither translated from the Greek nor are they 
traditional South Italian material. Some of them he had 
translated from Arabic writers, altering them considerably 
for the worse in the process; of others he gives us the 
names of the authors, but he gives them falsely! Many 
other confusions are to be found in these works of Constan- 
tine. Some of these errors, it is evident, were deliberately 
introduced, with the intention of deceiving. The wiles 
of Constantine have occupied the attention and exercised 
the ingenuity of scholars for generations. We are now in 
the happy position of being able to unmask him. The 
writer on whom Constantine mainly leaned was Abu 
Jakub Ishak ben Suleiman al Israeli (died 953), an excellent 
and respectable Jewish physician who practised in the 
tenth century, first in Egypt and later in Kairouan, and 
wrote voluminous Arabic works. He was known to the 
Latin West as Isaac Judaeus. ‘The further details of the 
literary depredations of Constantine need not occupy us, for 
they have been expounded in detail by that most learned 
of Orientalists, Moritz Steinschneider. 


§ 5. Salerno and the King of England 


There is yet a fourth legend of Salerno, however, with 
which we must deal faithfully. ‘The most popular medical 
work ever written is the Regimen Sanitatis Salerni. It has 
been translated into nearly every European and some 
Asiatic languages. It has run into hundreds of editions. 
Verses of it are still repeated by herbalists in every country, 
and it forms the basis of much medical folk-lore. It is a 


246 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENCE 


series of verses of mediaeval origin, the received text 
beginning with the line Anglorum regi scribit Schola tota 
Salerni. This long poem was admirably Englished by Sir 
John Harrington in the seventeenth century. The intro- 
duction runs as follows: 


The Salerne Schoole doth by these lines impart 
All health to Englands King, and doth advise 
From care his head to keepe, from wrath his heart, 
Drink not much wine, sup light, and soone arise. 
When meat is gone, long sitting breedeth smart; 
And after-noone still waking keep your eyes. 
When mov’d you find your selfe to Natures Needs 
Forbeare them not, for that much danger breeds. 
Use three Physicions still ; first Doctor Quiet, 
Next Doctor Merry-man, and Doctor Dyet. 


The advice is doubtless admirable. More scepticism may 
be expressed as to the identity of this English king than as 
to the wisdom of the restraint urged upon him. We are 
firmly of the opinion that he is another historical Mrs. 
’Arris, fit mate for Trotula herself. Some of the MSS. 
speak of him as‘ Robert.’ The older editions—and an undue 
proportion of the modern ones—identify him with Robert 
Duke of Normandy (1054 ?-1134), the eldest son of William 
the Conqueror. On his way back from the Crusade the 
graceless Robert sojourned a while at Salerno in the years 
1099-1100, to be healed of awound. His stay in the “Hippo- 
cratic city ’ is said to have cost him the English crown. It 
certainly cost him another wound, that of love, for it was 
there that he fell a victim to the charms of the lady that he 
married. The ascription of the poem to Robert would 
refer the work to about the year 1100, and it is usually so 
dated. This view, however, is untenable. 

The Salernitan poem, in the form at present recognized, 
was certainly put together at a much later date than 1100, 
and in the period of Salernitan decline. Manuscripts of it 
are very common, but the earliest known in its present form 
is from the beginning of the fourteenth century, and in the 


SCHOOL OF SALERNO AND ITS LEGENDS 247 


recension of the Catalan, Arnald of Villanova (1238 ?-1311, 
pp. 94-5). Arnald was a strange combination of charlatan 
and genius, who had himself studied at Salerno. He is 
under strong suspicion—to say the least of it—of having 
concocted practically the whole thing himself. As for the 
ascription to the King of England, it would be completely 
in the manner of the time to inset this as a recommendation 
of the poem to the reader. Some manuscripts of it are, in 
fact, dedicated to the ‘ King of Arragon,’ others to the 
‘King of the Franks,’ and others to Charlemagne himself. 
In these circumstances it is scarcely worth the scholar’s 
while to spend time in the identification of this particular 
king of England. In the Middle Ages, as now, medicine 
good enough for the great was held to be more than good 
enough for the small. ‘The word of an eminent actress or 
cricketer is held by our advertisements to justify the use 
of a nerve tonic, a pill, or an ointment. So it was also in the 
Middle Ages, though the contemporary idea of greatness 
differed somewhat from ours. After all, these manuscripts 
had to be sold, and what better way than to attach a king’s 
name tothem? So passes our fourth legend ! 

_ But as the legend of Dame Trot still rejoices the nursery, 
so does that of the Regimen still console the kitchen and 
the cottage. ‘The pen of that poet whose name is legion has 
been busy with the Salernitan verses. One of his best 
and best-known efforts has been exerted on the introduc- 
tion to Duke Robert. That passage contains the exquisite 
lines, 


Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant 
Haec tria, mens laeta, requies, moderata diaeta. 


These the unknown poet has thus immortalized, 


Joy, Temperance, and Repose 
Slam the door on the doctor’s nose. 


Classical scholars have assured us that Virgil’s tomb 
is none the worse for never having seen the bones of 


248 FROM MAGIC TO SCIENC 


Virgil. The important thing, forsooth, is not t fact 

the tradition! Such a one would have us believe he 
fib ceases to be a fib if it be but old enough. We, | 
our side, may at least claim that medical advice i is certainly 
none the worse for never having been given to Duke Robert. 
History permits us to hear little good of that scapegra 
but his remedies will be none the worse—and parses 


sweeter savour than his memory. 


INDEX OF NAMES 


Numbers in ordinary type refer to pages. Numbers in heavy type refer 
to figures or coloured plates. 


Adrian IV, Pope, 201 

Aethelwald, Bishop, 115, 132 

Alberic of Monte Cassino, 238 

Albertus Magnus, 88 ff., 189 

Alchandrus, 72 

Alcuin, 69 

Aldhelm, 115, 119 

Alexander the Great, 3, 173 f. 

Alexander III, Pope, 201 

Alexander of Hales, 88 

Alexander of Neckam, 89, 207 f. 

Alexander Severus, Emperor, 19, 27 

Alexander of Tralles, 140 

Alfred the Englishman, 80 

Alhazen, go 

Al Khowarizmi, 80 

Allen, Romilly, 56, 57 

Alphanus of Salerno, 75, 78 

Alphonso VI of Leon, 77 

Ammianus Marcellinus, 40 

Anastasius IV, Pope, 201 

Androsthenes, 174 

Angelico, Fra, 191 

Angelo, Giacomo, 50 

Anne of Brittany, Queen, 190 

Antoninus Pius, Emperor, 28, 47 

Apollinaris Sidonius, 122 

Apollonius, 145 

Apuleius Barbarus, 
180 ff., 55, 79, 80 

Aratus, 50 . 

Arcadius, Emperor, 20 

Archimedes, 37 

Aristarchus, 52 

Aristotle, 8, 11, 14, 38, 67f., 80, 
82, 88, 174, 209, 235, et passim 

Arnald of Villanova, 94 f., 246 f. 

Asclepiades of Bithynia, 19, 21 

Atkinson, R., 113 n. I, 1140, I, 
117 N. 2, 132 


24) 69, 145, 


Augustine, St., 18, 24, 27, 55, 61, 
97, 235, 238 

Augustine of Canterbury, St., 118 

Augustus, Emperor, 19, 40 

Ausonius, 27 

Avendeath, 81 

Averroes, 7, 89 f. 

Avicebron, 78 

Avicenna, 80, 93, 105 

Avienus, 50 


Bacon, Francis, 62, 88, 105 f., 110 

Bacon, Roger, 62, 81, 91 ff., 100 

Balder, 151 

Bartholomew of England, 89, 192, 
194 

Bede, 69, 115, 145, 147 

Benjamin of Tudela, 237 

Beowulf, 111 

Bernard, J. H., 131 n. 1, 114 n. 1, 
117 n. 2, 132 

Bernard Sylvester, 86, 216 f., 220, 
235 ff. | 

Bernard of Clairvaux, 202 

Berosus, 51 

Bessarion, Cardinal, 101 

Birch, W. de G., 132 

Blake, William, 232 

Boccaccio, 97 

Bock, Hieronymus, 197 

Boethius, 68, 235, 238 

Bonser, W., 164 n. I 

Botticelli, 102, 191 f., 81 

de Bourdichon, Jean, 192 ff., 88, 
84, 85, 86 

Bradley, H., 121 n. 2, 131 

Bradshaw, H., 117 n. 1 

Brigit, St., 163 

Brunfels, Otto, 195 ff., 90 

Bruno, Giordano, 109 


250 INDEX 
Bunbury, E. H., 24 

Burgundio of Pisa, 78 
Byrhtferth, 70, 142 ff., 52, 58 


Caelius Aurelianus, 24 

Caesar, Julius, 10, 26, 38 ff. 

Calcagnini, Celio, 102 

Capella, Martianus, 10, 68 

Cardan, Jerome, 231 

Cassianus, St., 163 f. 

Cassiodorus, 10, 27, 69, 139, 184 f. 

Cassius, Felix, 24 

Cato the Censor, ca Oe eS 30 

Celsus, 4, 20 ff. 

Censorinus, 39, 56 

Chalcidius, 67 

Charmis, 19 

Chaucer, 83 

Chrysostom, St., 165 

Cicero, 33, 34, 40, 51, 55, 69, 97, 
106 

Cid, 77 

Claudius, Emperor, 22, 30, 44 

Cleanthes, 50 

Cockayne, O., 120 n. 1, 128 ff., 132 

Columba, St., 117 

Columbus, Christopher, 50, 93 

Columcille, 145, 158 ff., 58 

Columella, 11, 24, 26, 30 

Conrad, Emperor, 201 

Conrad of Megenberg, 189, 194, 87 

Constantine the African, 75, 188, 
224, 235, 244 ff. 

Copernicus, 54, 62f., 
198, 223, 45 

Crateuas, 72, 73, 74, 177 ff. 

Creighton, C., 116 n. 2 

Crinas, 19 


Io1, 106, 


Dalton, John, 7 

Dante, 15, 97, 206, 238, 39 
Darwin, Charles, 9 
Democritus, 6, 19, 145 
Demosthenes, physician, 20 
Descartes, 62, 88, 110 
Diocles of Carystus, 173 
Dionysius Periegetes, 50 
Dioscorides, 69, 140, 178 ff., 75 
‘Disibode, St., 201 
Dominic, St., 86 


OF NAMES 


Domitius Ahenobarbus, 3, 6 
Donnolo, 71, 242 ff. 
Drusus, Emperor, 199 
Duns the Scot, 91 

Diirer, Albrecht, 192 


Eckbert, 239 

Eleanor, Queen, 201 
Elizabeth, Queen, 9 
Elizabeth of Schénau, 238 f. 
Epicurus, 6 
Erasistratus, 20 
Eratosthenes, 46, 52 
Ethne, 158 ff. 

Eudoxus, 39, 52 
Eugenius III, Pope, 201 
Eugenius of Palermo, 81 
Euthymenes, 19 


Fabricius of Aquapendente, 
108 f, 
Farragut, 81, 37 
Fludd, Robert, 223 
Fracastoro, Girolamo, 7 
Francis, St., of Assisi, 86, 90 
Franks, Sir A. W., 111, 49 
Frederick Barbarossa, 201 
Frederick II, Emperor, 241 
Frontinus, Sextus Julius, 27 
Fuchs, Leonhard, 91, 92, 197 


Galen, 20, 31, 55, 61, 65, 105, 140, 
178, 235 

Galileo, 7, 59, 65, 88, 110, 223 

Gargilius Martialis, 25 

Garrison, F. H., 30 

Gerard of Cremona, 75, 78, 80, 235 

Germanicus, Emperor, 51 

Germanus, St., 163 

“Giacosa, P., 71 

Gibbon, Edmund, 12 

Gilbert, William, 9, 109 f. 

Gildas, 111 ff., 162 f. 

Giotto, artist, 191 

Godefrid, monk, 203, 230 

Gonzalez, Domenico, 81 

Gregory of Tours, 121 ff. 

Gregory IX, Pope, 203 


INDEX OF NAMES 


Gross, H., 121 n. 1 
Gundissalinus, see Gonzalez. 
Guy de Chauliac, 96 


Hadrian, Emperor, 19, 47 

Harrington, Sir John, 246 

Harvey, William, 65, 108 f. 

Haterii, 2, 183, 2,3 

van Helmont, J. B., ro1z 

Henry II of England, 201 

Herman the Cripple, 72, 86 

Hermerus, Claudius, 25 

Hero of Alexandria, 35 

Herodotus, 28 

Herophilus, 20 

Herrade de Landsberg, 207, 211, 
222, 237 f., 96, 105 

Hesiod, 130 

Hessels, J., 120 n. 2 

Hewald, St., 164 

Hildegard, 86, 199 ff., Frontisptece, 
Pl. xi-xiv, 93-5, 96-103, 106-8 

Hippocrates, 38, 69, 140, 145, 179 

Hirsch, S. A., 121 n. 1 

Holt, Justice, 136, 165 

Holywood, John, see Sacrobasco. 

Homer, Pl. ix 

Horace, 26 

Hugh of Lucca, 93 

Hugh of St. Victor, 86, 224 


Ibn Daud, see Avendeath. 
Innocent IV, Pope, 203 

Isaac Judaeus, 78, 245 

Isidore, St., 10, 69, 211, 235 ff. 


Jenkinson, F.J.H., 115 n.1,117n.1 

Jerome, St., 16, 32, 50, 61, 120 

Johannes Hispalensis, see Aven- 
death. 

John XXII, Pope, 203 

John of Beverley, 147 

John Scot Erigena, 96 f. 

Juliana Anicia, 181 ff., 75-8 

Justinian, Emperor, 29 

Juvenal, 26 


Kepler, Johannes, 65, 109, 223 
Kuypers, A. B., 115 n. 1, 132 


251 


Lactantius, 55, 61 
Laidcend, 115 f. 
Largus, Scribonius, 22 
Leonardo da Vinci, 36, 102 ff., 192, 
41, 43-4, 82 
Leucippus, 6 
Levi ben Gerson, 96 
Livy, 39 
Louis VII, King, 201 
Lucretius, 5 ff., 56 
Luke, St., 157 


Lull, Raymond, 95 


Macer Floridus, 74, 188 

Macrobius, 39, 68 

Mago, 24 

Maimonides, 7, 78 

Manilius, 55 

Marbod of Anjou, 74 

Marcellus Empiricus, 18, 20, 24, 
141, 166 

Marsh, Adam, 91 

Maternus, Firmicus, 85 

Mathaeus Platearius, 188 f. 

Mercury, god, PI. ix 

Messahalah, 81, 211, 214, 235 f. 

Messalina, Empress, 22 

Meyer, A., 119 n. I 

Michael the Scot, 80 

Mithridates VI, King, 177 

Mondino de Luzzi, 93, 40 

Mone, R., 132 

Morgan, Pierpont, 62 

Morienus Romanus, 95 

Miiller, Johannes, see Regiomon- 
tanus. 

Musa, Antonius, 22 


Napoleon, Emperor, 241 
Nearchus, 174 

Nechepso, 145 

Nero, 20, 38 

Nicander, 175 f. 

Nicholas of Cusa, 100, 106, 109 
Nilus, St., 243 

Numa, King, 26, 39 


Odo of Meune, 74, 188 
O’Donnell, Manus, 158 
O’Donovan, 116 n. 2 


252 INDEX OF NAMES 


O’Keller, A., 160 n. 1 
Orcagna, artist, 191 
Oribasius, 140 


Palladius, 11, 25 

Pamphilus, 178 

Paracelsus, 105, 223 

Pasteur, Louis, 8 

Patrick, St., 114 

Paul, St., 50, 112 

Paul of Aegina, 140 

Pecham, John, 91 

Persius, 33 

Peter of Abano, 95 f. 

Peterson, W., 48 

Petosiris, 145, 65 

Petrarch, 25, 97 

Peutinger, 41 ff., 22 

Piranesi, 9, 13 

Plato, 67, 82, 93, 145, 173, 220, 
and passim 

Plautus, 13 

Plinius Valerianus, 141, 152 

Pliny the Elder, 10, 12 ff., 22 i... 
25, 37, 40, 53 ff., 69, 178 f. 

Plutarch, 39, 106 

Poggio, 7 

Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 102 

Pomponius Mela, 44 ff. 

Porphyry, 68 

Priscian, 24, 50 

Propertius, 26 

Ptolemy, astronomer, 44, 47 ff., 61, 
80 

Purbach, George, 101 

Pythagoras, 144 

Pytheas, astronomer, 19 


Rabanus Maurus, 69 
Regiomontanus, 81, 1o1 f., 42 
Rhys, J., 117 n.1 

Rioc, St., 163 

Robert, Duke of Normandy, 246 ff. 
Robert of Chester, 80, 95 
Robert Grosseteste, 88, go f. 
Roger of Salerno, 93 

Roland of Parma, 93 

Rupert, St., 201 

Rutilius Namatianus, 44 


Sacrobosco, 81 

Sammonicus, Quintus Serenus, 24, 
135 

Sanctan, 113 

Schoepperle, C., 160 n. 1 

Scot, see Michael ; also John Scot 
Erigena. 

Seneca, 12, 14 ff., 37, 38, 40, 57; 
62, 69 

Sextus Placitus Papyriensis, 18, 141 

Shakespeare, 8, 152 

Sigmund, St., 163 

Silvia of Aquitaine, 44 | 

Singer, C. and D., 120n.2, 121n.3 

Solomon ibn Gabirol, 78 | 

Soranos, 24 

Sosigenes, 39 

Steinschneider, Moritz, 245 

Stokes, W., 132 

Sudhoff, K., 7 

Suetonius, 30, 40 

Sylvester II, Pope, 72 


Tacitus, 14, 151 
Tertullian, 55, 61 
Thaddeus of Florence, 93 
Theodore, Archbishop, 147 
Theodoric, Emperor, 185 
Theodoric, monk, 203, 230 
Theodoric, physician, 93 
Theodosius I, Emperor, 20 
Theophrastus, 14, 174 f. 
Thomas Aquinas, St., 88 ff. 
Thomas of Catimpré, 189 
Thothmes III, Pharaoh, 171, 70 
Thurneysen, R., 116 n. 1 
Tiberius, Emperor, 19 
Titus, Emperor, 12 
Traube, L., 121 n. 5 
Trithemius, Abbot, 223 
Trottus, 244 

Trotula, 244 ff. 

Tycho Brahe, 65, 109 


Varro, 10 ff., 24, 68, 154 f. 
Vasari, 103 

Vegetius Renatus, 25 

del Verrocchio, Andrea, 102 
Vesalius, 62 f., 107 f., 198, 46 
Vespasian, Emperor, 12, 19 


* 
4 
3 
A 
a 
s 
a 


INDEX OF NAMES 253 


Vincent of Beauvais, 89 William of Saliceto, 93 
Vindicianus, 24, 27 Williams, H., 116 n. 1, 117 n. 1 
Vipsanius, Marcus Agrippa, 40, 48 | Willibrord, 144 
Virgil, 3, 25, 56, 247 Witelo, go 
** Virgilius Maro,” 121 n. 2 Woden, 150 ff. 
Vitruvius, 26, 35, 36, 40, 51 ff. Wright, T., 128 ff. 

Wiilcker, R. P., 129, 132 
Warren, F. E., 120 n. 2 Wynkyn de Worde, 194 


Wiener, L., 121 n. 1 

William I of England, 246 | 

William of Moerbeke, 88 Zimmer, H., 116 n. I, 117 n. I, 
William of Ockham, 91 lig n. 1, 121 n. 5 


Printed by Havell, Watson & Viney, Ld., 
London and Aylesbury. 


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